Lufthansa is Europe’s Number 1 Airline Group in 2018

The airlines of the Lufthansa Group carried a total of 142 million passengers in 2018, setting a new passenger record.

With more than 1.2 million flights and a seat load factor of 81.4 per cent, 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 per cent, 9.3 per cent and 8.5 per cent respectively.

The number of passengers at the Frankfurt hub grew by 4.7 per cent in 2018.

Eurowings also contributed to the Lufthansa Group's new passenger record in 2018 with growth of 18 per cent.

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In December, the freight capacity was 4.7 per cent higher than in the previous year and the tonne-kilometres sold 0.4 per cent higher.

This results in a payload factor of 66.1 per cent, which is 2.8 percentage points lower.

In 2018, total freight capacity was 4.3 per cent higher than in the previous year. At the same time, sales increased by 0.8 per cent in this period. At 66.4 per cent, 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 per cent over the same month last year. The number of seat kilometres offered was 11 per cent up on the previous year, while sales increased by 10.6 per cent.

This results in a seat load factor of 78.5 per cent, 0.3 percentage points lower than in December 2017.

Read More: Lufthansa Hit 10.6 Million Passengers in November