Thanks to a recovery in passenger flights and the boom in air freight, Lufthansa achieved an operating profit again for the first time in the Corona crisis. The adjusted operating result amounted to 17 million euros in the third quarter after a loss of 1.26 billion euros in the same period last year, as Lufthansa announced on Wednesday. The company exceeded the expectations of analysts, who had forecast an average of EUR 33 million. Excluding the high cost of downsizing programs, the group posted an operating profit of 272 million euros. "With the increasing demand for business trips and a record result for Lufthansa Cargo, we were able to master another milestone on our way out of the crisis: the return to the black", explained Lufthansa boss Carsten Spohr.After taxes and depreciation, however, Lufthansa made a net loss of 72 million euros.

In the summer months, air traffic in Europe recovered noticeably thanks to the dwindling Corona travel restrictions, so that the subsidiary Eurowings surprisingly achieved an operating profit of 108 million euros.

The network airlines made an operating loss of 450 million euros because of the weak long-haul business.

The freight subsidiary Lufthansa-Cargo, on the other hand, is on a record course of more than one billion euros in operating profit per year.

Air freight demand is high due to ocean freight bottlenecks and disruptions in global supply chains, and freight prices have risen.

Still 3,000 full-time positions too many

The airlines of the Lufthansa Group, which includes Eurowings, Swiss, Austrian and Brussels Airlines, carried 19.6 million passengers from July to September. That corresponded to almost half of the pre-crisis level. At 5.2 billion euros, sales were almost twice as high as a year earlier. Overall, the operating loss should halve in 2021 compared to the record value of 5.5 billion euros in 2020.

From now on, Lufthansa believes that business will continue to improve. The new bookings had already reached around 80 percent of the pre-crisis level in September, including on transatlantic routes. Because from November 8, the USA will allow travelers with Covid vaccination back into the country. Nevertheless, Lufthansa is still limiting the offer in the fourth quarter to around 60 percent of the pre-crisis level. From summer this should increase to 80 percent.

Meanwhile, Lufthansa is making headway with downsizing in Germany and permanent cost reductions, because employees are accepting severance payments and partial retirement more than expected.

This year, 4,000 employees have already left the company, and 3,000 more have made corresponding agreements.

However, there is still a staff surplus of up to 3,000 employees in Germany, explained the airline.

Most recently, Europe's largest airline group still had 107,000 employees, before the Corona crisis there were almost 140,000.

In the meantime, the annual costs have been permanently reduced by 2.5 billion euros, with a target of 3.5 billion.