In 2018, the airlines of the Lufthansa Group carried a total of 142 million passengers, setting a new passenger record. With more than 1.2 million flights and a seat load factor of 81.4%, the aircraft load factor was higher than ever before.
The growth drivers for the network airlines were the Zurich hub and the Munich and Vienna hubs, with passenger growth of 9.5%, 9.3% and 8.5% respectively. The number of passengers at the Frankfurt hub grew by 4.7% in 2018. Eurowings also contributed to the Lufthansa Group’s new passenger record in 2018 with growth of 18%.
In December, the freight capacity was 4.7% higher than in the previous year and the tonne-kilometres sold 0.4% higher. This results in a payload factor of 66.1%, which is 2.8 percentage points lower. In 2018, total freight capacity was 4.3% higher than in the previous year. At the same time, sales increased by 0.8% in this period. At 66.4%, the load factor was 2.3 percentage points lower than in the previous year.
In December 2018, the airlines of the Lufthansa Group welcomed around 10 million passengers on board their aircraft. This corresponds to an increase of 6.9% over the same month last year. The number of seat kilometres offered was 11% up on the previous year, while sales increased by 10.6%. This results in a seat load factor of 78.5%, 0.3 percentage points lower than in December 2017.
