Lufthansa Group leads European carriers in Q1 traffic growth

The Lufthansa Group released solid results for the first quarter of 2018, reporting cargo traffic up 4.9 percent year-over-year to 2.14 billion revenue tonne kilometers. This is down from last year’s first-quarter growth of 6.3 percent, but very much in line with worldwide trends, and a much better result than its big European competitors Air-France-KLM and IAG, which both saw cargo traffic decline in the quarter. (Our sister publications Cargo Facts published a more in-depth analysis on March figures.)

Impressively, earnings before interest and taxes (EBIT) nearly doubled, up to EUR €32million from the same period last year. Capacity was increased by about 6 percent, leading to a slight decline in cargo load factor to 69.6 percent.

Lufthansa Cargo’s urgent-logistics subsidiary, time:matters, is also doing very well. This week it reported an increase in revenue of 55 percent to €108 million for the full year 2017, which the company attributed to strong demand from the automotive and semiconductor/high-tech sectors.