German airline Lufthansa said yesterday that passenger numbers slumped by 9.1 per cent in September in the wake of last month's terror attacks in the United States.

Lufthansa said in a statement it transported a total 4.025 million passengers in September, down 9.1 per cent from the figure for the same month a year earlier.

The overall seat-load factor, which measures the proportion of seats filled on flights, fell to 72.2 per cent in September from 77.8 per cent a year earlier.

On transatlantic routes alone, the number of passengers plummeted by 16 per cent to 426,000 year-on-year, the statement said.

The news sent Lufthansa shares sharply lower on the Frankfurt stock exchange where they were showing a loss of 2.1 per cent at 11.65 euros.

Meanwhile, Italy's treasury ministry said the state-owned airline Alitalia would get a capital increase by the end of the year.

EU Transport Commissioner Loyola de Palacio said last week Alitalia, which is controlled by the Italian Treasury, could receive a final tranche of an agreed state-aid package. The first two tranches of the package, totalling 2.0 trillion lira were paid out in 1997. The final tranche is expected to be worth up to 750 billion lire ($347 million) Looking at the first nine months passenger numbers amounted to 35.831 million in the period from January to September, up only 1.1 per cent .