Lufthansa Passenger Numbers Climb

German airline Lufthansa said Thursday that passenger numbers rose in November, but not enough to fill the increased capacity on offer. Lufthansa said in a statement that a total 3.969 million people flew with its aircraft last month, 9.1 percent more than in the year-earlier month. But the number of seat-kilometers on offer had been increased by 10.3 percent, so that the so-called seat-load factor, a key measure or profitability, declined by 0.9 percentage points to 72.5 percent in November. Passenger traffic was higher on all routes. Taking 11 months to November as a whole, total passenger numbers worldwide were up by 12.4 percent at 47.337 million and the seat-load factor edged up by 0.9 percentage point to 74.3 percent. Lufthansa said that freight traffic also increased, with Lufthansa Cargo transporting a total 157,000 tons of freight and post in November, an increase of 5.7 percent year-on-year.