The Lufthansa Group has increased the number of passengers they carried by 8.1 percent in the first nine months of 2011, according to a report released by the company. This correlates to approximately 80.7 million passengers flying with Lufthansa, SWISS, Austrian Airlines, bmi or Germanwings. The Lufthansa Group also increased its capacity by 10.6 percent, though the average passenger load factor per aircraft correspondingly fell to 77.7 percent.
Though the traffic figures for the Lufthansa Group developed positively overall in the first three quarters of 2011, the growth in sales slowed in comparison with the start of the year. Because of the declining growth in sales, Lufthansa Passenger Airlines announced in September that it would use its operational flexibility in the upcoming winter flight timetable and lower the increase in its available seat kilometers to four percent.
The improvement in Lufthansa’s traffic figures earlier in the year can be attributed to the utilization of larger aircraft and the launch of the new European cabin on short-haul routes. Lufthansa Passenger Airlines had 49.4 million passengers fly with them, while SWISS carried 12.4 million passengers, 8.6 million passengers flew with Austrian Airlines, bmi had 4.5 million passengers fly with them, and Germanwings carried 5.8 million passengers. Lufthansa Cargo also recorded growth of 8.4 percent in its ton-kilometers transported in the first nine months of the year, and transported a total of 1.4 million tons of freight and mail. The capacity during this period climbed by 12.3 percent and the sales rose by 9.5 percent.
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