However, despite the increase in passengers between January and December 2011, the carrier’s load factor fell by 3.1 percentage points to 73.8% over the year, while capacity rose 5.9% and revenue passenger kilometres (RPK) climbed by 1.7%.

In December alone, the Lufthansa-owned airline said that it carried 791,600 passengers, which equated to a 9% increase when compared with December 2010.

During the same month, the average passenger load factor, at 72.3% was 0.1% below the figure for the same month last year, however capacity rose by 6.6% while the figure for revenue passenger kilometres (RPK) rose by 6.5%.

Elsewhere, in Europe, around 652,300 passengers flew with Austrian Airlines in December, which was 11.8% more passengers than the same time last year.  In total the figure for the whole year hit 8.9 million passengers in Europe – an increase of 5.5% on 2011.

However, during December, intercontinental passenger numbers grew only slightly when compared with a year earlier, by 0.3% to reach 126,300.

Meanwhile, as a result of the crises in Japan and the Middle East, intercontinental passengers dropped 1.1% to 1.6 million between January and December 2011.