Status: 27.10.2022 8:27 a.m
Rising prices and an impending recession are apparently not putting pressure on people’s mood to travel. Lufthansa also expects high demand for tickets in winter. Travelers treat themselves to the more expensive booking classes more often than before.
Despite the gloomier economic situation and rising prices, Germany’s largest airline, Lufthansa, expects demand for flights to increase in the winter months. “The desire to travel and thus the demand for plane tickets is still unbroken,” said CEO Carsten Spohr today at the presentation of the quarterly figures in Frankfurt.
“The Lufthansa Group has left the pandemic behind economically and is optimistic about the future,” said the airline’s boss. The passenger airlines planned in the fourth quarter with around 80 percent of the capacity of 2019, the year before the outbreak of the Corona crisis. Despite the usual seasonal slowdown, the group expects an operating profit in the last three months of the year.
The MDAX group had already announced key figures for the seasonally important summer quarter in mid-October: Operating profit quadrupled to 1.1 billion euros. The bottom line is that Lufthansa earned 809 million euros in the third quarter – after a loss of 72 million euros a year earlier.
Many flight cancellations and increased ticket prices
For the first time since the outbreak of the corona pandemic, which was disastrous for aviation, the main brand Lufthansa was profitable again, so that all passenger airlines together were in the black. The result would have been even better without the many flight cancellations due to the operational disruptions caused by the lack of staff at airlines and airports. Instead of the originally planned 85 percent of the pre-crisis capacity, the Lufthansa Group was only able to take off 78 percent. The costs of irregularities in air traffic amounted to 239 million euros.
Average yields, an indicator of ticket prices, were even 23 percent higher than in 2019. Business travelers and holidaymakers are treating themselves to the more expensive booking classes more often than before. A total of 33 million passengers flew with the Lufthansa airlines in the third quarter, compared to 20 million in the same period last year.
For the group’s passenger division, it was the first quarterly operating profit since the beginning of the pandemic – also because of the significant increase in ticket prices. The freight division Lufthansa Cargo achieved another record value and intends to exceed its record operating profit of 2021 in the current year. The maintenance division Lufthansa Technik is also expecting a record result in 2022, it said.
Black figures also expected in the fourth quarter
The MDAX group had already doubled its profit forecast for 2022 last week and is now aiming for an operating result (adjusted EBIT) of more than one billion euros. The Management Board also expects figures to be in the black for the otherwise rather weak fourth quarter.
The holiday airline Eurowings earned a little less at 103 million euros despite the strong summer quarter. The subsidiaries from Switzerland and Austria, Swiss and Austrian Airlines, achieved the highest operating margins at 15 and 16 percent.
Repayment of state aid for Lufthansa subsidiaries
In addition, Lufthansa now wants to repay the remaining state aid for its foreign subsidiaries Austrian and Brussels by the end of December. According to its own statements, Austrian Airlines has achieved the best quarterly result in over 20 years – despite “numerous systemic challenges in European aviation”. Due to the good development, the company can fully repay the remaining 210 million euros of the 300 million euros in state aid to Austria at the end of the year. The repayment of the state-backed loan granted in the summer of 2020 was actually planned for the end of 2025.
The Lufthansa subsidiary Brussels Airlines welcomed 2.28 million passengers in the third quarter, 50 percent more than in the same period last year. In 2020, the airline received Belgian government aid of 290 million euros, which the company now also wants to repay by the end of the year.