German aviation group Deutsche Lufthansa AG (DLAKY, DLAKF) announced Tuesday that the group flew 0.4 percent more passengers in the month of October compared to last year. Traffic or sales, for the group grew 3.3 percent, capacity increased 3.1 percent, and passenger load factor edged up 0.1 percentage point.
The airline added that the pricing environment in the passenger business continued to be clearly negative compared to last year.
Lufthansa Group reported a 0.4 percent growth in passengers flown in October to 9.71 million from the year-ago month.
During the month, Lufthansa passenger airlines, including Lufthansa Regional and Germanwings, reported a 0.3 percent increase in passengers flown, and at Swiss Air it grew 4.3 percent, while it declined 4.6 percent at Austrian Airlines.
However, the number of flights the group operated during the month declined 3.9 percent to 88,941 from last year.
Lufthansa Group noted that it was able to significantly increase sales and keep the load factor stable, despite the strikes by the Vereinigung Cockpit pilots' union.
The group's total traffic or sales in terms of revenue seat-kilometers was 19.36 billion in October, up 3.3 percent from October 2013. Lufthansa's total capacity, which is measured as available seat-kilometers, grew 3.1 percent for the month to 24.02 billion.
The group's passenger load factor was also up 0.1 percentage points year-over-year at 80.6 percent, boosted by the Middle East/Africa and European regions.
The airline noted that the deployment of aircraft with more seats resulted in higher capacity than last year although the number of flights was lower. Sales growth at the passenger airlines was mainly achieved on long-haul routes as strikes mostly affected short-haul flights.
In the German carrier Lufthansa Passenger Airlines, capacity increased 3.2 percent, and traffic grew 3.4 percent. Passenger load factor also improved 0.1 percent from last year.
In the logistics business segment, the Lufthansa Group's transported volume of cargo and mail declined 4.1 percent to 165,000 tonnes. However, the group's cargo load factor was up 1.0 percentage points to 70.0 percent.
Lufthansa Airlines cargo's transported volume of cargo and mail also decreased 4.6 percent to 143,000 tonnes from last year. However, the cargo load factor was up 0.2 percentage points to 69.9 percent.
Despite eight strikes within a few weeks by the pilots' union Vereinigung Cockpit (VC), Lufthansa managed to fly the flights with the support of pilots not taking part in the strike and by rescheduling flight times.
Looking ahead to fiscal 2014, Lufthansa's Executive Board confirmed its operating profit forecast at around 1.0 billion euros or 1.3 billion euros after adjustment for one-off effects. The forecast includes the impacts
of strikes of around 170 million euros through October, but no
impacts of any further strikes in the remainder of the year.
For fiscal 2015, the company adjusted the operating result target to now be "significantly above the result of 2014" from the prior projection of about 2 billion euros.
In Frankfurt's XETRA exchange, the company's shares are trading in Tuesday's regular trading session at 13.15 euros, up 0.17 euros or 1.31% on a volume of 3.32 million shares.
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