Lufthansa’s 2008 profit despite crisis

TIRANA, Feb. 9 – Presenting its 2008 results and plans for 2009 at a press briefing in Bulgaria, Gabor Horvath, Lufthansa’s manager for Bulgaria and Albania, said that despite the poor market conditions and a worsening airline industry worldwide, the Lufthansa Group had managed to achieve expected profits of 1.3 billion euro in 2008.
Horvath said that for Bulgaria, the past year had seen a growth rate of more than 20 per cent in the number of passengers being flown to and from the country by Lufthansa/Swiss, as compared with 2007, for a total of more than 400 000 customers. Such was a record for the 39 years that Lufthansa has been on the Bulgarian market. Worldwide, Lufthansa Group transported more than 70 million passengers.
In 2008, the Lufthansa Group invested 14 billion euro in 53 new aircraft, which had been planned to increase fleet size, but given market conditions, will instead be used to replace ageing planes, making the fleet “more environmentally friendly and allowing better customer service”, Horvath said.