SIA Group passenger traffic rises 7% in April

[SINGAPORE] Singapore Airlines (SIA) Group’s passenger traffic grew 7 per cent year on year in April, outpacing a 6.3 per cent increase in capacity, it announced on Friday (May 15).

The group, which comprises flagship carrier SIA and budget arm Scoot, posted passenger traffic of 13.7 billion revenue passenger kilometres in April, up from 12.8 billion in the year-ago period.

Passenger traffic measures demand for an airline’s service and is derived by multiplying the number of passengers carried by distance travelled.

The group recorded a passenger load factor (PLF) of 88.4 per cent for the month, an improvement of 0.5 percentage point from the year before. PLF is the passenger traffic expressed as a percentage of passenger capacity.

The two airlines carried a total of 3.6 million passengers, up 7.5 per cent year on year. SIA’s monthly PLF stood at 87.7 per cent; Scoot’s was 91 per cent.

For the flagship carrier, passenger traffic rose 5.1 per cent to 10.5 billion revenue passenger-km, against a 4.3 per cent expansion in capacity. Performance was notably strong on European routes, where the PLF rose 4.9 percentage points to 87.7 per cent.

The group attributed these gains to “spillover passenger traffic and cargo loads, particularly on services to Europe and the Americas, as capacity through Middle East hubs remained constrained by the ongoing conflict in the region”.

Budget carrier Scoot’s capacity grew 14.2 per cent year on year, while passenger traffic rose 13.7 per cent to 3.1 billion revenue passenger-km.

On the cargo front, loads grew 3.7 per cent to 530.7 million tonne-km, from 511.9 million tonne-km, against a capacity expansion of 2.3 per cent. Consequently, the cargo load factor went up by 0.8 percentage point to 57.9 per cent.

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Cargo and mail carried totalled 102.6 million kg, marking a 6.9 per cent year-on-year increase.

Shares of SIA rose 2.4 per cent or S$0.15 to close at S$6.42 on Friday, before the announcement.