The German carrier said the 8 per cent year-on-year decline in cargo carried on its freighters and passenger aircraft to 152,000 tonnes was also due in part to the economic slowdown in the Americas, its fastestgrowing market over the past year.
Lufthansa Cargo, Lufthansa’s standalone cargo carrier, suffered an ever greater setback with traffic dropping 11.4 per cent on-year to 133,000 tonnes while revenue declined 4.5 per cent.
Despite the August declines, Lufthansa’s cargo traffic in the first eight months of the year was ahead of the same period in 2007. The Lufthansa group carried 1.297 million tonnes of freight, up 6.9 per cent, 1.14 million tonnes by Lufthansa Cargo, down three per cent on the first eight months of 2007.
Lufthansa Cargo’s load factor, a measure of how full its planes were, declined 4.8 percentage points to 62.7 per cent.
Air France-KLM, Europe’s second-largest airfreight carrier, said freight traffic in August was down 4 per cent from a year ago, due to fewer shipments between Asia and Europe during the Olympic Games in China.
The load factor slipped 2.9 points to 60.7 per cent, but as in previous months revenue per tonne of cargo carried increased “strongly”, the airline said.
