Lufthansa Group: More passengers in first half of 2012

The airlines in the Lufthansa Group carried a total of 3.9 per cent more passengers in the first half of 2012 than in the same term last time round. All in all, 49.4 million passengers opted to fly with Lufthansa German Airlines, SWISS or Austrian Airlines. Besides lifting passenger figures, all the carriers in the Passenger Airline Group were able to sell more passenger seat kilometers than were additionally offered in the first six months, thus raising the average seat load factor of their aircraft. The seat load factor rose group-wide by one percentage point to 76.9 per cent. Capacity was increased by 2.3 per cent, sales were up by 3.8 per cent.

Lufthansa German Airlines carried a total of 35.8 million passengers in the six-month term in 2012, an increase of 3.4 per cent on the year-earlier level. Capacity was up by 1.8 per cent, while sales increased by 2.8 per cent. The seat load factor rose accordingly on the prior-year level by 0.8 percentage points to 76.5 per cent. SWISS transported around 8.1 million passengers in the first half-year, Austrian Airlines carried close to 5.4 million passengers.

Volumes at Lufthansa Cargo fell by 9.2 per cent in the first six months of the present year compared with a strong first half in 2011. During the term, the cargo carrier in the Lufthansa Group carried a total of 864,000 tonnes of freight and mail. Capacity was reduced by 7.6 per cent against the level in the previous year. The load factor slightly fell by 0.7 percentage points to 68.4 per cent.

The business figures of the Lufthansa Group in the first six months of 2012 will be released on 2 August 2012 and will be available for download from 8.00 CET at www.lufthansa.com/investor-relations.

[1]Incl. Lufthansa Regional and Germanwings
[2] Lufthansa Passage, SWISS (incl. Edelweiss), Austrian Airlines, Germanwings