World News Desk!!! After two consecutive years of losses, German airline Lufthansa said it is set to turn profitable again in 2022 as international air traffic recovers from the COVID-19 pandemic. Lufthansa Group nearly doubled its revenue year-on-year to 32.8 billion euros ($34.9 billion) due to a huge increase in demand for air travel during the year, Xinhua news agency reported. Net income 791 million euros Last year, Lufthansa’s passenger numbers more than doubled year-on-year to 102 million, the airline said. In early 2022, earnings were still heavily impacted by the proliferation of the Omicron variant and related restrictions.
When the COVID-19 pandemic paralyzed global air traffic in 2021, Lufthansa was kept afloat by state aid and guarantees of up to 9 billion euros. The company said that all loans have since been fully repaid and the German government has sold its 20 percent stake in the airline. Meanwhile, according to the German Aviation Association (BDL), the country’s air traffic is set to grow even more in 2023. BDL said capacity on intercontinental and European routes from Germany would reach 88 percent of 2019’s pre-pandemic levels. Air traffic in other European countries should have already recovered by the summer of this year. According to the BDL, point-to-point airlines had reduced their services to medium-sized airports in Germany due to comparatively high location costs, including air traffic taxes, fees and security checks.
–IANS
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