Lufthansa has lost the title of biggest European airline to its Irish rival Ryanair, the passenger-traffic record of the German airline group showed on Monday.
Lufthansa, of which Belgium’s Brussels Airlines is a part, transported 145 million passengers last year, an increase of 2.3% on 2018. This was a new record for the group, but not enough to allow it to end in the first place: Ryanair, which placed a close second to the German group in 2018, ended last year on 152.4 million passengers, a 9% increase on 2018, according to figures released earlier.
The number of passengers transported by Brussels Airlines in 2019 is not yet known. Its figures are englobed in those of the Eurowings entity, to which the Belgian company belonged for a long time before becoming a semi-autonomous subsidiary within Lufthansa in mid-2019.
The companies that made up Eurowings transported 28.1 million passengers last year, a 1.4% drop compared to 2018.
The Brussels Times
