Lufthansa has achieved its aim and defied a market-related revenue decline of €2.56 billion ($3.5 billion) by posting an operating profit of €130 million for 2009.
The Group thus earned about €1.2 billion less than during the previous year.
“We are succeeding in the crisis because our business segments are broadly poised and ideally equipped and because we have a strong balance sheet,” said Lufthansa chairman and CEO Wolfgang Mayrhuber, speaking at the presentation of the full-year figures
“In addition, we have taken targeted and swift evasive action to steer capacities and costs without ever losing sight of the customer.”
At minus €8 million, the operating result for the passenger airline group, which includes the financial results of Germanwings, Swiss, Austrian Airlines and bmi, was significantly below the level of the previous year.
The aim of Lufthansa Passenger Airlines’ ‘Climb 2011’ programme to safeguard earnings is the sustainable improvement of the result by €1 billion by the end of 2011.
The implementation of the programme began in the third quarter of 2009; however, it could not prevent the passenger airlines posting a loss of €107 million.
Swiss posted an operating result of €93 million. From the date of full consolidation Austrian Airlines contributed an operating loss of €31 million and bmi entered a loss of €78 million. German wings posted an operating profit of €24 million.
The logistics business segment was forced to deal with a major demand-related revenue slump in 2009 and posted a significant operating loss.
Lufthansa maintenance repair and overhaul did very well and recorded an increase in revenue despite highly challenging conditions. In addition, the business segment achieved a year on year improvement in its operating result.
The IT services business segment also recorded a slight improvement in its result and the catering business segment posted a slightly improved operating result with a decline in revenue.
During 2009, the Lufthansa Group generated revenues totalling €22.3 billion; this was equivalent to 10.3 per cent less than the year before. There was a market-related drop in traffic revenue by 11.8 per cent to €17.6 billion. This was mainly due to the decline in passenger and freight figures, with the decline in average yields. Overall, the operating income of the group decreased by 7.2 per cent to €25 billion during the reporting period.
The group recorded an operating result of €130 million in 2009, €1.2 billion less than during the previous year. This figure includes a balance of €86 million from the first-time consolidation of Austrian Airlines (badwill). The group’s net loss for the period came to minus €112 million; the net profit for the previous year stood at €542 million.
In its recently revealed summer flight schedules, Lufthansa will serve an almost unchanged number of destinations with virtually the same number of flights as in the previous year.
Seating capacity will be slightly higher. On average, Lufthansa will be operating 12,853 flights weekly in the summer schedules compared with 12,860 last time round.
The airline will serve 204 destinations in 81 countries in the summer timetable with six newcomers in the flight schedules – Rostock-Laage, Bari, Palermo, Zadar, Chisinau and Tashkent. Services in Europe have been marginally reduced to 11,445 flights weekly to German and European destinations. In contrast, flights in the long-haul, intercontinental network have been increased to a weekly 1,408.
The airline recently began operating thrice-weekly flights with its PrivatAir partner from Munich to Tashkent, the capital of Uzbekistan. Furthermore, thrice-weekly flights with an Airbus A330 are to be resumed from Munich to Miami in addition to the existing connections from Frankfurt and Dusseldorf. Non-stop flights from Munich to Riyadh in Saudi Arabia will be increased from two to three weekly, alongside the daily flight from Frankfurt. Lufthansa is also considering several new flight connections to Iraq (Baghdad, Erbil).
Lufthansa has also optimised its timetable in Germany and Europe with four new destinations and 15 additional connections.