Lufthansa Group, which includes carriers Swiss, BMI and Austrian Airlines, has reported its airlines flew 90.2 million passengers in 2010, a 17.2% increase over 2009. Lufthansa alone flew 58.9 million passengers, a 5.9% gain.
The airline group credits the upturn in the air travel in 2010, which enabled it to post healthy figures despite the paralysis of European flights in April due to the Icelandic volcano and snow disruption in December. Lufthansa cancelled more than 4,500 flights last month due to snow, which cost it €65 million euros ($84 million). As a result, European traffic declined in December by half a point but it made up the loss in the rest of the world to post a slight overall increase in passenger number to 6.47 million passengers.
Freight numbers also increased in 2010 as the airline carried 1.8 million tonnes of merchandise and mail, an increase of 18.2% from 2009.
The German airline earned €800 million in operating profit for 2010 and expects this to improve in 2011.