Lufthansa reports rise in passenger numbers in December

PanARMENIAN.Net - Lufthansa, Germany's number one airline, said on Friday that its passenger numbers rose again in December, boosting the number for the whole year.

Lufthansa said in a statement it carried 7.299 million passengers in December, 2.5 percent more than during the same month last year, according to AFP.

That pushed the total for the whole year up by 1.0 percent to 104.6 million passengers.

At the same time, the airline reduced the number of flights, by 1.5 percent in December and by 3.7 percent for the whole year.

That meant the so-called seat-load factor, which measures the number of seats filled on flights, increased by 0.8 percentage point to 78.0 percent in December and by 1.0 percentage point to 79.8 percent in 2013, the statement said.

In addition to the Lufthansa brand, the group also owns SWISS and Austrian Airlines.

The volume of freight transported by its Lufthansa Cargo unit decreased by 2.3 percent to 133,000 tonnes in December and by 1.0 percent to 1.715 million tonnes throughout the year, the statement added.