Lufthansa May Hit 1 Billion euros Profit this Year

Lufthansa finance chief Stephan Gemkow said the airline may achieve its target of 1 billion euros of operating profit a year early in 2007, Euro magazine reported.

“We want to reach our goal of a billion euros of operating profit in 2008 at the latest –under good conditions, also earlier,” Mr. Gemkow was quoted as saying in the magazine. “If Swiss is consolidated, we would probably be over a billion in 2007 already.”

Lufthansa took over rival airline Swiss two years ago and has achieved a 46 percent increase in group operating profit last year to 845 million euros as sales grew 10 percent to 19.85 billion euros.

Last month, when the carrier published detailed full-year results for 2006, Lufthansa simply repeated its forecast that operating profit would rise to over 1 billion euros by 2008.