Europe's Airlines On The Stock Market

In 2017, Germany's leading airline Lufthansa carried approximately 130 million passengers, making it the largest European airline in terms of passengers. Other leading carriers in Europe were Ryanair (128.8 million passengers), IAG (104.8 million), Air France-KLM (98.7 million) and easyJet (81.6 million). Despite having the highest passenger numbers however, Lufthansa is not Europe's most valuable airline. Both budget carrier Ryanair and IAG (the mother company of British Airways) had higher market capitalizations. Whereas Ryanair's worth was roughly 18 billion euros, Lufthansa's value was only 11.8 billion euros. The discrepancy between passenger numbers and airline value was even more remarkable in the case of Air France-KLM. Europe's third carrier with nearly 100 million passengers, Air France-KLM's value was only 3.2 billion euros, or roughly one-fifth of Ryanair's market cap.