German airline Lufthansa said yesterday that business continued to recover in May, even if passenger numbers were down again in concrete terms.

Lufthansa said in a statement that 3.784 million people flew in its aircraft in May, 5.7 per cent fewer than in May 2001.

But that was the smallest decrease since September 11th, Lufthansa noted.

"Indeed, passenger numbers were actually up on routes to both the Asia-Pacific and Middle East/Africa."

A total 243,000 passengers flew with Lufthansa to the Asia-Pacific region in May, 8.9 per cent more than in May 2001.

And passenger numbers for Middle East/African routes were up 4.2 per cent at 109,000, Lufthansa said.

By contrast, the number of passengers flying to European destinations fell by 6.5 per cent to 2.965 million in May and passenger numbers to North and South America were down 9.5 per cent at 460,000.

Nevertheless, capital utilisation increased, with the so-called seat-load factor advancing by 1.9 percentage points to 73.4 per cent.

Looking at the first five months as a whole, a total 17.071 million people flew with Lufthansa in the period from January to May, 9.8 per cent fewer than in the corresponding period a year earlier.