Lufthansa reports Q1 losses of €190m

Lufthansa says it is working hard in a difficult market to recoup earnings lost through strikes as it reported a narrower first-quarter loss yesterday.

The German airline is also fighting competition from low-cost rivals such as Easyjet, Ryanair and Vueling, which are increasing services to larger airports, making it harder for Lufthansa to recoup losses from last month’s three-day pilot strike.

Air France-KLM last week also spoke of a tough economic climate and airline industry body IATA said yesterday that demand for air travel had slowed in March, with growth of 3.1%, compared with 5.6% in February.

Lufthansa kept its target for 2014 adjusted operating profit of €1.7bn-1.9bn, even though strikes have cost it more than €70m in lost profit this year.

“Compensating for the strike impact is now top of our agenda, especially as we have not managed to close the gap in forward booking that has appeared during the strike by the pilots’ union,” chief financial officer Simone Menne said.

She added that March was expected to be the weakest point of the market, and April had been better.

Ms Menne also said the airline was seeing revenue yields per passenger coming under pressure at its Frankfurt and Munich hubs and that North American routes were not performing as well as in the past.

For the quarter, which is traditionally loss-making for airlines, Lufthansa reported an adjusted operating loss of €190m.

Ms Menne said that talks with pilots, whose strike last month caused the cancellation of almost 4,000 flights, were constructive but she could not rule out further strikes.