Lufthansa gains, a group effort

Business is good these days for the Lufthansa Group — which includes Lufthansa German Airlines, SWISS and Austrian Airlines. During the first half of 2012, the group saw its passenger traffic grow by 3.9% to a total of 49.4 million passengers. And all of the carriers in the group were able to sell more passenger seat kilometres 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%. Capacity was increased by 2.3%; sales were up by 3.8%. Lufthansa German Airlines carried a total of 35.8 million passengers in the six-month term in 2012, an increase of 3.4% on the year-earlier level. Capacity was up by 1.8%, while sales increased by 2.8%. The seat load factor rose accordingly on the prior-year level by 0.8% to 76.5%. SWISS transported around 8.1 million passengers in the first half-year; Austrian Airlines carried close to 5.4 million passengers. Go to http://www.lufthansa.com/investor-relations for more.