Lufthansa says recovery will continue during 2023

Lufthansa, which has announced its full-year results for 2022, expects that recovery will continue, even if economic growth in the coming year will only be “slight”.

Overall, the Lufthansa Group earned €33 billion ($35 billion) of revenue, finishing 2022 with a net income of €791 million ($839.4 million). In total, the group welcomed 102 million passengers, which is more than twice as much as in 2021, when Lufthansa carried 47 million passengers. While the start of 2022 was still impacted by COVID-19-related restrictions and spread of the Omicron variant, its passenger airlines nevertheless “benefited from a significant increase in demand for airline tickets over the course of the year”.

“The Lufthansa Group put the coronavirus pandemic behind it in the 2022 financial year. The recovery in demand was far stronger and unfolded far more rapidly than industry experts had anticipated at the start of the year, prompting us to significantly expand our capacities again,” stated Carsten Spohr, the Chairman of the Executive Board for the airline. Spohr noted that at times the global air traffic system was overstretched, especially during the summer months, as personal shortages affected “airports, ground handling service providers, air traffic control and airlines”.

Thus, Lufthansa is now “looking to the future”. According to the executive, the airline group wants to “make further progress towards the realization of our medium-term targets in the 2023 financial year”.

However, it also expects that the economy will grow slightly in the coming year, yet “assumes that the positive course of business in the reporting year will continue in the 2023 financial year”.

“This expectation is based in particular on the ongoing strong demand, which is reflected at the start of 2023 in the form of continued positive developments in new bookings in the passenger business,” the airline group’s outlook continued.

Recently, Lufthansa expanded its order book with 22 aircraft, namely 10 Airbus A350-1000, five A350-900, and seven Boeing 787-9 aircraft. Furthermore, it introduced its new long-haul cabin product called Allegris, which includes several different products throughout its cabin classes.

Lufthansa expects to spend between €2.5 billion and €3 billion ($2.6 billion and $3.1 billion) of Capital Expenditure (CapEx) in 2023 on new aircraft.