German airline Lufthansa said today the global economic slump and the September 11th terror attacks in the US took their toll on business last year, with passenger numbers falling 2.7 per cent to 45.7 million in the period from January to December.
On its scheduled services alone, the number of passengers who flew with Lufthansa fell by 3.9 per cent to 39.7 million, the carrier said in a statement.
But the number of people who flew with the inner-European service, Lufthansa CityLine, was up by 4.6 per cent at 6 million.
The so-called seat-load factor, which measures the proportion of seats filled on flights, fell by 2.9 percentage points to 71.5 per cent.
Lufthansa said its cargo unit also suffered from the global slump and the fallout from the events of September 11th, with the volume of freight transported falling by 8.1 per cent to 1.7 million tonnes and the load factor down by 5.4 percentage points at 62.8 per cent.
The overall load factor of both the cargo and passenger services combined declined by 4.2 percentage points to 67.6 per cent.
Lufthansa said it would publish full earnings and sales figures for the whole of 2001 on April 25th.
AFP