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Lufthansa plane in Miami
Photo: CRISTOBAL HERRERA-ULASHKEVICH / EPA
After two years of losses, Lufthansa returned to profitability in 2022.
The airline company reported a net profit of 791 million euros for the past year.
In the previous year, the company had posted a loss of 2.2 billion euros.
“Lufthansa is back.
In just one year, we have achieved an unprecedented financial turnaround,” said Lufthansa CEO Carsten Spohr.
According to Lufthansa, significantly more people flew with the group's airlines again last year.
Overall, the company counted 102 million passengers last year, more than twice as many as in the previous year.
"The demand for air travel will remain high in 2023," said Spohr.
However, the freight subsidiary Lufthansa Cargo was once again the largest source of profit with a record result of 1.6 billion euros, while the passenger airlines still made a loss of 300 million euros due to the weak first half of the year.
High costs of 555 million euros to compensate customers for flight cancellations and delays in the summer, when there was a shortage of staff everywhere in aviation, also had an impact.
The largest German airline was in crisis in 2020 due to the corona pandemic and the associated travel restrictions.
The company negotiated a government rescue package worth nine billion euros with the federal government and the EU Commission.
As early as November 2021, Lufthansa repaid all financial aid and canceled funds that had not been called.
Airlines such as Eurowings, Austrian Airlines and Swiss also belong to the Lufthansa Group.
In the current year, the recovery back to the pre-crisis level of 2019 should continue: The available capacity of the passenger airlines should be increased to 85 to 90 percent from 72 percent last year.
The competition is also optimistic: Air France-KLM, for example, wants to increase the number of seats almost to the capacity of 2019 after an occupancy rate of 85 percent in 2022. Europe's largest low-cost airline Ryanair wants to sell 168 million tickets this year, significantly more than before the pandemic.
hey/dpa/Reuters