Lufthansa Cargo again maintained its leading position in Europe last year, with a total of 1.6 million tonnes of freight and mail flown. The total volume declined slightly in a challenging market environment. The company had carried around two percent more freight the previous year. Lufthansa Cargo increased the capacity offered by two percent over the last twelve months. However, with sales falling slightly, capacity utilisation was also down. The full-year load factor amounted to 66.3 per cent (-3.4 percentage points). “Last year was not an easy one for the air freight industry”, emphasised Lufthansa Cargo CEO and Chairman of the Executive Board Peter Gerber. “Turbulence in the Chinese market and the strong US Dollar, that affected a lot of industries, stretched us all to our limits. Strikes called by the Vereinigung Cockpit pilots’ union and the cabin crew union UFO also weighed heavily on us at Lufthansa Cargo.” Nevertheless, Lufthansa Cargo continued to invest further in its own product and network last year, adding new destinations in places such as Turkmenistan, Vietnam and Brazil to its flight schedule. The high customer satisfaction level of the previous year was maintained. Peter Gerber emphasised that Lufthansa Cargo will remain flexible and operate close to the market in 2016 as well. The Lufthansa subsidiary is withdrawing two MD-11 freighters from its fleet to further increase capacity utilisation on the freighter routes. The airline is therefore offering its customers flights of its five new Boeing 777 freighters as well as twelve MD-11Fs. On top of this, there are capacities via its AeroLogic subsidiary, which has a total of eight Boeing 777Fs. Lufthansa Cargo customers can also make use of the belly capacities of passenger aircraft operated by Lufthansa and Austrian Airlines