Legacy carriers hanging on to airfreight for dear life

摘要

Europe's legacy carriers have stood on the brink out of the blue more than once before. Many an airline's passenger service performance from March on was utterly forgettable. It largely messed up the corporate results of the Lufthansa Group (EUR -6.7 billion; EUR +1.2 billion in 2019), of Air France KLM (EUR -7.1 billion; EUR +290 million in 2019) and of IAG (EUR -6.9 billion; EUR +1.7 billion in 2019). Better freight performances only managed to alleviate the story to a certain degree. There was great joy in Frankfurt on 5 March, where Dorothea von Boxberg, the new head of Lufthansa Cargo, commented on the full-freighter operator's results in a digital media conference. In 2020, which she called "the most challenging twelve months in our 26-year corporate history", the air cargo specialist increased its sales by about 11% vis-a-vis 2019, bringing them to EUR 2.76 billion, and its adjusted ebit from EUR 1 million to 772 million. This means the figure was even above the EUR 310 million registered in 2010, the previous best year ever - even though the freight performance declined by 27% to 6.5 billion ftk.