LUFTHANSA POSTS 6.7B EURO LOSS IN ‘ANNUS HORRIBILIS

German carrier Lufthansa suffered a net loss of 6.7 billion euros ($8.1 billion) in 2020, a nightmare year for the company during which the coronavirus pandemic repeatedly brought the air travel industry to a near standstill, Rachel More and Christian Ebner reported for Deutsche Presse-Agentur (dpa).

In 2019, the airline turned a net profit of 1.2 billion euros. Last year, thousands of flight cancellations and ongoing travel restrictions catapulted Lufthansa into an unprecedented crisis, which prompted a multibillion-euro state bailout to rescue the company.

And Lufthansa is not out of the woods yet: After a difficult start to 2021, chief executive Carsten Spohr was less optimistic for the coming year, forecasting that the airline would reach 40-50 percent of its 2019 capacity. Previously, the goal had been up to 60 percent. Revenue collapsed by 63 percent in 2020 to 13.59 billion euros.

During the year, Lufthansa said passenger numbers fell by 75 percent, while capacity was down by 69 percent. The seat load factor slid by 19.4 percentage points to 63.2 percent.

The German, Belgian, Austrian and Swiss states propped up the company with a total of 9 billion euros in response to the crisis.

Since then, the German government has been Lufthansa's largest single shareholder. For 2021, Spohr aims for a smaller loss that will mean the company does not have to draw on that full amount of government aid.

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