More than 103 million passengers flew with airlines in the Lufthansa Group last year. In total, Lufthansa, Germanwings, SWISS and Austrian Airlines carried 2.5 million or 2.4 per cent more passengers in the January to December term than in the previous year. All the Group airlines profited from more flexible capacity management: While capacity overall rose by 0.6 per cent, sales at the passenger airlines grew by 2.2 per cent. The passenger load factor improved across the Group by 1.2 per cent to an overall 78.8 per cent.

Lufthansa German Airlines carried 74.7 million of the total passenger count, an increase year-on-year of 2.4 per cent. Passenger numbers rose on the previous year in the Middle East/Africa and Europe traffic regions. The number of flights dipped by 1.3 per cent. Lufthansa increased capacity by an overall 0.2 per cent, largely by deploying larger aircraft. The airline, simultaneously, sold more than the additionally available seat-kilometres. Revenue-seat kilometres rose by 1.3 per cent so that the seat load factor improved by 0.8 percentage points to 78.1 per cent.

SWISS carried 16.8 million passengers, an increase of three per cent on the year-earlier figure. The seat load factor rose by 1.3 percentage points to an industry high of 82.4 per cent. A total of 11.5 million passengers opted for flights with Austrian Airlines, an increase year-on-year of 1.8 per cent. The airline improved its seat load factor against the prior year by 3.8 percentage points to 77.5 per cent.

Volumes at Lufthansa Cargo fell as expected on weaker demand in 2012 to 1.7 million tonnes of transported cargo and mail. Tonnage year-on-year was down by 8.5 per cent. Thanks to flexible capacity management, the cargo carrier subsidiary nevertheless maintained capacity utilisation at a high level of 69.6 per cent.