Lufthansa Cargo Outperforms the Market in Q2 with Strong Results

Boeing 777 Lufthansa Cargo D-ALFF in FRA

Lufthansa Cargo “outperformed the market as a whole” in the second quarter of this year, as average yields remained 40% above 2019 levels despite lower air cargo demand.

Freight capacity was six percent above the same period of 2022, largely due to the recovery in passenger demand and subsequent increase in belly capacity as Lufthansa stepped up its flight schedule to meet that demand.

Across all Lufthansa Group airlines (Lufthansa, Swiss, Austrian Airlines, Brussels Airlines and Eurowings), capacity stood at 3.8bn available tonne-km, up 8.8% year on year but 14.8% lower than in the second quarter of 2019.

Revenue cargo tonne-km (RTK) rose by 2.1% year on year to 2.2bn, still 20.3% below 2019 levels, and the cargo load factor declined by 3.6 percentage points over the second quarter of last year to 56.4 (3.9 points below the 2019 load factor).

Compared to the same period of 2022, capacity was raised most significantly on the Asia Pacific sector (up 28.9% to 1.4bn), where RTK also saw the most dramatic increase (up 16.3% to 932m). The sole sector with reduced capacity was the Americas (down 1.7% year on year), while the only routes that achieved an – albeit small – improvement in the cargo load factor were those within Europe (up 0.5 percentage points to 43% as capacity rose by 12.9% while RTKs increased by 14.2%).

Lufthansa Cargo’s Adjusted EBIT decreased dramatically to €37 million (from €482 million in the second quarter of 2022), but was still significantly above the result achieved in 2019, a statement said. In the first half-year, its Adjusted EBIT came to €188 million (down from €977 million in the same three months of 2022).

For the Lufthansa Group overall, total revenues in the second quarter were up year on year by about 17% while Adjusted EBT almost tripled to €1.1bn.

“This corresponds to an operating margin of 11.6% and is a new record for a second quarter result at the Lufthansa Group,” the group said.