German carrier Lufthansa cuts its 2005 first quarter operating losses to 26m compared with a loss of 116m for the same period in 2004.
Wolfgang Mayrhuber, the airline's chief executive hailed it as a “sound result despite the dramatic hike in oil prices.”
He said all the airline's business segments had contributed to the “good performance.”
The quarter saw both oil prices rise to a record level and Lufthansa take over Switzerland's troubled national carrier SWISS.
Mr Mayrhuber said Lufthansa was still “successfully pursuing” its action plan to boost earning by 780m by the end of 2005.
* Iberia reported first 2005 quarter net losses of 16.1m compared with 10.1m for the same p quarter in last year. The Spanish carrier also said that operating losses widened from 26.4m to 31.2m between 2004 and 2005.
Revenue was up 5% to 1.18bn but operating costs also rose by 5.3% to 1.22bn mainly because of high oil prices and non-recurrent expenses.
Traffic figures up
Europe's major airlines all reported an increase in traffic figures for April. Lufthansa led the way with a 5% increase followed by Air France/KLM with 4.8%, Iberia with 4.1%, SAS with 2.3% and BA with just a 0.1% rise.
However BA's figures, which also recorded a drop of 0.8% in its load factor to 74.7%, were softened by a big rise of 13.3% in its premium traffic.
Air France/KLM also reported a slight drop in its load factor, down 0.3% to 79.2% while Lufthansa enjoyed a 0.4% rise to 73.7%.
No frills carrier easyJet which now has the largest fleet of all European low cost airline after the delivery of new Airbus 319, had a 25.2% increase in passengers for April 2005 compared to April 2004 and also saw its load factor also rise by 3.6% to 85.2%.