Lufthansa Group ends 2011 with record numbers

The airlines that make up the Lufthansa Group carried a record number of passengers in 2011. A total of 106.3 million passengers chose to fly with Lufthansa, SWISS, Austrian Airlines, bmi and Germanwings. This is equivalent to growth of 7.5% compared to the previous year. The Group increased its capacity by 9.8% overall in 2011, while its revenue seat kilometres rose by 7%. The average passenger load factor for the aircraft correspondingly fell by two percentage points to 77.2%. The trend of decreasing sales that emerged this past fall, continued in the remaining months of the year. Group-wide, it proved not possible to match the level of sales growth recorded at the beginning of the year. In light of this development and ongoing economic uncertainty, the Passenger Airline Group plans to achieve low-level growth of 3% in its available seat kilometres in the full year 2012. According to officials, this will be realized by using larger aircraft and introducing the New Europa Cabin on Lufthansa’s European routes. A total of 65.5 million passengers flew with Lufthansa-brand planes in 2011 – 11.1% more than in the previous year. (http://www.lufthansa.com)