Selected major European airlines based on revenue 2022

In 2022, despite difficult years due to the coronavirus pandemic, the German airline, Lufthansa Group generated over 35 billion U.S. dollars in revenue. In that same year, Air France – KLM followed the Lufthansa Group with approximately 28.3 billion U.S. dollars.

Lufthansa Group's performance during the coronavirus pandemic

Lufthansa Group was founded in 1953. It is the flag carrier and the largest German. The group owns Lufthansa German Airlines, Eurowings, SWISS, Austrian Airlines and Lufthansa Cargo with a total group fleet consisting of 710 aircraft at the end of 2022. The number of passengers transported by Lufthansa Group went up from 36.4 million passengers in 2020 to 101.8 million passengers in 2022. Consequently, the revenue of Lufthansa Group also went up from 13.6 billion euros in 2020 to 32.8 billion euros in 2022. Lufthansa Group reported an operating proft, which amounted to around 1.2 billion euros in 2022, the first recorded profit after the coronavirus pandemic.

The European aviation industry was hit hard by the pandemic

Until the coronavirus pandemic hit, the European aviation industry was flourishing, carrying and connecting millions of passengers throughout the region every year. In addition to Lufthansa, other leading airline groups in Europe like Air France – KLM, International Airlines Group, Turkish Airlines, Ryanair, and so on were also impacted by the pandemic. Passenger capacity and traffic of Europe-based commercial airlines dramatically dropped in 2020. Therefore, commercial airlines in Europe reported net losses of 34.5 billion U.S. dollars in that year. However, the European aviation industry has been on its recovery path since the last months of 2020. Concerning the environmental footprint of the aviation industry, due to differences in fleet structure, fuel efficiency and cutting-edge maintenance of aircraft each airline emit a varying level of pollutants into the atmosphere. Ranking European airlines by carbon dioxide (CO₂) emissions, Ryanair was the least environmental polluting airline in Europe, with 66 grams CO₂ per passenger-kilometer as of 2021.