It now seems that the national carrier of Germany, Lufthansa, has reported a drop in its passengers of 3.9 percent for the first nine months of 2009. The carrier goes on to blame the global recession, which has had a death grip on the airline industry since the start.

So far, the airline has been able to carry 41.9 million passengers when capacity had been cut by 1.9 percent. The revenue per seat is also down by 3.8 percent. Thus, during the first nine months, the load factor on the planes fell by 1.5 percent.

The carrier said that passenger numbers actually dropped in all regions except the Middle East. The group went on to say that its financial results for the first nine months would be announced officially October 29.

However, these kinds of drops in the airline industry have not been unheard of. In fact, these drops are not quite as bad as what other carriers have seen. The fact remains that the recession is still affecting the airline industry, and it will be for quite some time.

Most experts seem to agree that even after the recession has come to a close, the airline industry will still be feeling the effects of this recession for years to come. This is due to the fact that it has changed the way that people fly for both business travelers and leisure travelers.

The recession has made most people very aware of how they spend their money, and this goes double for travel. Thus, people may never go back to the spending habits they had on airlines before the start of the recession.