The growing demand for travel and higher ticket prices brought Lufthansa significantly fewer losses at the start of the year. In the first quarter, the seasonal operating minus (adjusted EBIT) was 273 million euros and thus almost half as high as in the pandemic-ridden prior-year period, as the company listed in the MDax announced on Wednesday in Frankfurt.
The net loss decreased only because of a write-down by a fifth to 467 million euros. The Executive Board around Lufthansa CEO Carsten Spohr sees the group on course to significantly exceed the operating profit of 1.5 billion euros from 2022 in the current year as planned.
In the first quarter, the airlines in the Lufthansa Group carried around 22 million passengers, around 70 percent more than a year earlier. At that time, the corona pandemic still had a significant impact on ticket demand. According to the adjusted figures, sales have now jumped by 40 percent to a good 7 billion euros. In the passenger business, the group was able to more than halve its adjusted operating loss to 512 million euros. The freight subsidiary Lufthansa Cargo, on the other hand, had to accept a slump in profits: At 151 million euros, its adjusted operating profit was around 70 percent lower than in the record quarter at the beginning of 2022.
