The Middle East is one of the most lucrative markets for European carriers, Lufthansa has said.
The airline's revenues from the region, rose 5.1 per cent last year, despite the terror attacks on US cities. This was the second highest revenue generating region after Europe, which registered a 5.3 per cent growth. Revenues from this region, where Lufthansa operates 34 weekly flights, accounts for five per cent of its global sales. The German national carrier suffered heavily in the North Atlantic and Asia-Pacific sectors where its traffic revenue fell six per cent and 9.4 per cent respectively. It however, made a profit on overall operations, by grounding 43 aircraft immediately after September 11. Recently, it brought back 28 of them into operation as the traffic flow in most of the sectors returned to normal. Lufthansa will add three weekly flights from Dubai to Munich in October. It currently operates 11 flights out of the UAE to Germany. "We have a market share of 46 per cent in the UAE-Germany routes and we are trying to increase this by adding three new flights from October," said Uwe Wriedt, Lufthansa's general manager for passenger sales in UAE and director for Gulf, Iran and Pakistan. The company's operating profit stood at 28 million euros, which is 97.3 per cent less than that of 2000.