Lufthansa Group reported a first-quarter net loss of €467 million (US$516.2 million) on total revenue of €7 billion, the company announced Wednesday.
The loss for the company, which includes Lufthansa, Austrian Airlines, Brussels Airlines, Swiss and Eurowings, compares with a €584 million loss in Q1 2022, while revenue was up 40 percent from the €5 billion reported a year prior. Passenger airline revenue rose by 73 percent year over year to €5.2 billion.
“Normal seasonality” triggered the loss, exacerbated by the “faster recovery in the private travel segment compared to the business travel segment,” according to a Lufthansa earnings release. Additional elements that affected earnings include the costs for the planned expansion of flights in the summer—in which the company expects a “travel boom,” investments in operational stability and the effects of various strikes at German airports in which Lufthansa Group was not a negotiating partner, according to the company.
“The Lufthansa Group is back on track,” CEO Carsten Spohr said in a statement. “After a good first quarter in which we were able to significantly improve our result, we now expect a travel boom in the summer as well as a new record in our traffic revenue for the year as a whole. On short- and medium-haul leisure-oriented routes, demand is already exceeding 2019 levels.”
The number of passengers during the quarter increased to 21.6 million versus 13 million in Q1 2022, about 74 percent of 2019 figures. Capacity expanded to 75 percent of pre-pandemic 2019 levels because of “sustained high demand,” and was about 30 percent above the prior year’s level, according to Lufthansa.
Second-quarter guidance includes capacity at 82 percent of 2019 levels with full-year 2023 capacity expected to be between 85 percent and 90 percent recovered.
