SIA Group passenger traffic rises 4.9% in May

[SINGAPORE] Singapore Airlines (SIA) Group’s passenger traffic grew 4.9 per cent year on year in May, while its passenger capacity increased by 5.3 per cent.

The group, which comprises flagship carrier SIA and budget arm Scoot, posted on Monday (Jun 15) passenger traffic of 13.5 billion revenue passenger kilometres in May, up from 12.9 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 86 per cent for the month, a decline of 0.4 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 5.2 per cent year on year. SIA’s monthly PLF stood at 84.6 per cent; Scoot’s was 91.2 per cent.

For the flagship carrier, passenger traffic rose 3.4 per cent to 10.5 billion revenue passenger-km, against a 4.2 per cent expansion in capacity.

Performance was notably strong on West Asia and Africa routes, where the PLF rose 4.1 percentage points to 87.9 per cent.

The group fielded these gains amid shifting operational dynamics. It noted that while capacity constraints through Middle East hubs persisted, they had eased compared with previous months.

Consequently, SIA continued to benefit from spillover passenger traffic and cargo loads – albeit to a lesser extent.

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Budget carrier Scoot’s capacity grew 9.8 per cent year on year, and its passenger traffic rose 10.1 per cent to 3.1 billion revenue passenger-km.

On the cargo front, loads grew 3.2 per cent to 534.1 million tonne-km, from 517.6 million tonne-km, against a capacity expansion of 1.5 per cent.

Consequently, the cargo load factor went up by 0.9 percentage point to 58.1 per cent.

Cargo and mail carried totalled 102.8 million kg, marking a 4.4 per cent year-on-year increase.

Shares of SIA rose 2.4 per cent or S$0.17 to close at S$7.17 on Monday, before the announcement.