Lufthansa usurps Ryanair to regain place as Europe’s biggest airline

Lufthansa has overhauled Ryanair to retake the crown as Europe's largest airline by passenger numbers after Ryanair was forced to cut thousands of flights because of pilot rostering problems. The Lufthansa group as a whole carried 130m passengers last year, it said Wednesday. The equivalent figure from Ryanair was 129m, meaning Ryanair slips behind Lufthansa after overtaking it in 2016. Lufthansa has grown rapidly, having taken over Brussels Airlines at the end of 2016 and is aiming to grow Eurowings to become Europe's third largest point-to-point carrier. The group has also benefited from the collapse of Air Berlin in the latter part of 2017. Ryanair, meanwhile, has curbed its growth plans after a pilot rostering issue left it without enough standby pilots to fly its planes, forcing it to cancel 20,000 flights. <br/>