With global travel restrictions still being hampered by the COVIDF-19 pandemic, this has had a substantial effect on the business performance of Lufthansa Group in the first quarter of 2021. Carsten Spohr, CEO of Deutsche Lufthansa AG, commented that: “The longer the crisis lasts, the greater people’s desire to travel again becomes. We know that bookings shoot up wherever restrictions are loosened, and travel becomes possible again. Given the foreseeable major advances in vaccination rates, we expect demand to rise sharply from the summer onwards. Encouraging signals, such as the announcement by the EU Commission that it will once again allow vaccinated passengers from the U.S.A. to travel to Europe, confirm our confidence.”
Group sales fell by 60% to €2.6 billion in the first quarter of the financial year (previous year: €6.4 billion). The previous year’s comparable quarter was only partially affected by the effects of the pandemic. Despite this, operating loss based on Adjusted EBIT was €1.1 billion, lower than in the previous year (previous year: minus €1.2 billion). Consolidated net income was minus €1.0 billion (previous year: minus €2.1 billion). At the end of the quarter, the Lufthansa Group had liquidity of €10.6 billion. This includes untapped funds of the governments’ stabilization measures and loans amounting to around €5.4 billion.
In total, the airlines of the Lufthansa Group carried 3 million passengers in the first quarter of 2021, which was 10% of the pre-crisis level of the first quarter of 2019. The seat load factor was 45% or 33 points lower than in the first quarter of 2019. Lufthansa Cargo has benefited from the increased demand for cargo in the current climate, posting €802 million in sales for the quarter, a year-on-year increase of 45% compared to 2020. The freight load factor rose by 11.9 points to 75.7%. Adjusted EBIT improved accordingly to €314 million (previous year: minus €22 million), the highest ever in Lufthansa Cargo history. (€1.00 = US$1.20 at time of publication.)
