according to a monthly traffic report released Friday. That contrasts with a 5.2 percent year-over-year increase for January through August. The monthly data captures not forward bookings but flown traffic by revenue seat kilometers. Lufthansa did not attribute the September decline to the surcharge on global distribution system bookings that went into effect Sept. 1 but rather to strikes at the beginning of the month and to strikes at both its Lufthansa Passenger Airlines Group and its competitors in September 2014. Leaked GDS
data and travel agency
comments pointed to GDS bookings shifting away from Lufthansa during September 2015, but the airline in late September claimed "no significant change of the overall booking situation." Traffic on other Lufthansa Group airlines—Swiss and Austrian—rose 1.4 percent and 0.1 percent, respectively, during September.