German airfreight group Lufthansa Cargo has revealed that the volumes it handled declined in the opening nine months of 2012, down 8.9 per cent on a year-on-year basis to 1.29m tonnes.
In what the group described as a ‘highly demanding’ global market, business was depressed by a downturn in the Asia/Pacific region of 12.9 per cent for January-September, the group reported.
Despite these adverse conditions, Lufthansa Cargo made 'flexible use of its capacities to ensure that utilisation remained high', with load factor dropping only slightly, by 0.3 percentage points to 69 per cent.
'Knowing how volatile the airfreight business is and aware of the importance of exercising maximum flexibility, we make a point of focusing particularly on capacity management,' emphasised Lufthansa Cargo chairman and CEO Karl Ulrich Garnadt. 'In that way, Lufthansa Cargo has kept utilisation of its aircraft stable in spite of the weak market. Whenever fuel prices are high, the rule that only high load factors enable a cargo airline to fly profitably applies more than ever.'
