German airline sustains last quarter 1999 recovery (180 words)

Published: 8/7/2000

Lufthansa carried 190,235 passengers between Russia and Germany between January-May 2000, an increase of 13.2% on the corresponding period in 1999. Traffic including both Russia and the CIS was up by 11% to 290,000 passengers. These figures follow declines of 13% for traffic in 1999, although volume growth of 30% in the last quarter of the year. Seat load factors also grew according to Ulrich G. Rueger, the regional director of Lufthansa in Russia and CIS, load factors up by 6.3% on Russian routes and 6% on CIS routes. According to Rueger the traffic of the first five months of the year brought the airline's business back to pre-crisis levels, reflecting the general improvement in Russia and the CIS and Lufthansa's tactics in dealing with the difficult market, by maintaining routes rather than cutting them in response to depressed traffic. For its summer schedule (26th March-28th October) Lufthansa is operating routes to 13 Russian and CIS cities on 106 flights a week from 5 German cities. Additionally Lufthansa Group's charter subsidiary Condor, operates weekly Frankfurt - St. Petersburg carrying German tourist

Article ID: 1963