Lufthansa reports further growth. After posting an all-time high of 51.3 million passengers last year, growth continued in the first three months of this year. The Lufthansa passenger airlines carried 11.4 million passengers in the first quarter, an increase of 2.8 per cent on the year-earlier level. Since the rise of one per cent in revenue passenger-kilometres lagged behind the increase in capacity (+3.1 per cent), the seat load factor fell by 1.5 percentage points to 71.8 per cent.

The volume of freight and mail transported by Lufthansa Cargo was marginally down on the first quarter last time round to 410,000 tonnes. Although available capacity was scaled back by 3.4 per cent, the cargo carrier lifted sales by 1.1 per cent. The cargo load factor improved in consequence by 3.1 percentage points to 68.3 per cent.

Overall capacity utilisation on passenger and cargo flights rose in the first quarter by

0.3 percentage points to 70.3 per cent.

The Lufthansa Group will be publishing the business figures for the first three months on

11 May 2006.They will also be available for download on the www.lufthansa-financials.com website.