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The Lufthansa Group has sustained the visible upward trend in passenger and cargo traffic already evident in the first half-year and further improved its traffic figures for the period January-September.
In the first nine months of this year the Lufthansa Group airlines carried 33.1 million passengers. This represents a 7.7 per cent drop in passenger volume year-on-year in the wake of the terrorist attacks of 11 September, but an improvement on the first half-year, when the passenger count fell by 9.3 per cent. Despite an 8.7 per cent reduction in available capacity between January and September, sales declined by only 6.2 per cent against the previous year. As a result, capacity utilisation of the passenger fleets rose by two percentage points to a respectable 74.9 per cent, bringing the passenger load factor up to the record level achieved in 2000.
Signs of recovery were also apparent in the cargo segment. From January to September Lufthansa Cargo transported two per cent less freight and mail than in the same period last year. However, this compares well with the first half, when the airline reported a year-on-year decline in cargo volume of 3.6 per cent. The cargo load factor of 66.4 per cent exceeded the figure for the first nine months of 2001 by a gratifying five percentage points.
The Lufthansa Group boosted its overall load factor (passenger business and cargo) to 71.1 per cent, which corresponds to an increase of 3.4 percentage
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