Lufthansa Cargo raised utilisation of its aircraft a further step up in the first quarter. In a difficult market environment, the cargo carrier appreciably scaled back capacity by 7.4 per cent. Since sales fell by a lesser 5.9 per cent, the load factor improved by more than one percentage point to 71.4 per cent.

Overall, Lufthansa Cargo carried around 400,000 tonnes of freight and mail in the first quarter of the year – a decline of 7.2 per cent compared with the year-earlier level.

In the course of the year, Lufthansa Cargo is expecting a marked pick-up in demand, as Chairman and CEO Karl Ulrich Garnadt emphasised: “We intend to utilise market opportunities and grow profitably again. To that end, we are investing in our route network and making our services even more attractive to customers.”

In March this year, Lufthansa Cargo commenced twice-weekly connections to Guadalajara in Mexico. The cargo carrier has also marginally stepped up services to China again in the summer flight schedules after cutting back capacity in a difficult market on that route in the past few months. It is now operating an additional freighter service weekly to Shanghai and Hong Kong.

The financial results for the first three months of the year will be published on 2 May.