Persistent economic downturn, worldwide, reduced the Lufthansa passenger count in the first six months of 2009. Lufthansa consequently failed to match its performance level in the first half last time round. Passenger numbers at Lufthansa fell in the first half of 2009 by 6.1%, in the same period, capacity was scaled back to accommodate declining demand by 2.5%. Traffic was down by 6.4%, reducing the load factor by 3.1% percentage points to 75.1%. Except for Middle East / Africa, the first half passenger count declined in all traffic regions.
Altogether, Lufthansa and SWISS carried a total of 33.2 million passengers aboard their aircraft in the first six months of the year, which is 4.8% than in the comparable term in the previous year. Of the total, 6.5 million flew with SWISS. The number of flights operated by the airlines in the Lufthansa Group fell by 4.7% to 393,896.
