Lufthansa June passenger numbers up 4.8%

Lufthansa, Germany's number one airline, said on Tuesday it carried 9.52 million passengers in June, 4.8 percent more than during the same month last year. Taking the six months to June as a whole, passenger numbers grew 3.9 percent to 49.37 million, Lufthansa said in a statement. The key seat-load factor, which measures the number of seats filled on flights, gained 1.2 percentage points to 81.9 percent in June alone and by 1.0 percentage points to 76.9 percent over the six-month period. However, amid turbulence related to the global economic slowdown, cargo division Lufthansa Cargo saw freight fall 4.6 percent to 151,000 tonnes in June alone and by 9.2 percent to 864,000 tonnes in the January-June period.