SIA Group’s passenger traffic up 2.6% in November

[SINGAPORE] Singapore Airlines (SIA) Group on Monday (Dec 15) reported year-on-year growth of 2.6 per cent in November passenger traffic for the two carriers it operates.

This was slightly higher than the 2.2 per cent increase in passenger capacity reported by national carrier SIA and low-cost arm Scoot.

Passenger traffic, which measures the demand for an airline’s service, is determined by multiplying the number of passengers carried by the distance travelled. This came in at 13.3 billion in November, up from 12.9 billion in the previous month.

Passenger load factor (PLF), which is passenger traffic expressed as a percentage of passenger capacity, came in at 87.3 per cent, up 0.3 percentage point from the year-ago period.

This comes as Scoot’s PLF rose 3.3 percentage points, helping to offset SIA’s 0.4 percentage point drop to 86.4 per cent.

In particular, Scoot’s PLF was boosted by a 6.1 percentage point increase for East Asia, to 91.9 per cent; PLF for other regions fell.

Overall, the two airlines carried 3.6 million passengers in November, 6 per cent more than the same period last year.

At the group level, cargo carriage grew 12.4 per cent year on year, supported by year-end peak demand and a “higher contribution from freighter aircraft”, SIA said.

Cargo loads rose 8.1 per cent, while cargo capacity expanded 1.6 per cent. This brought cargo load factor to 60.2 per cent for November, 3.6 percentage points higher than the year before.

The group noted that, in November, Scoot launched passenger services to Nha Trang in Vietnam, and SIA resumed seasonal services to Sapporo in Japan.

Shares of SIA fell by 0.2 per cent or S$0.01 to close at S$6.32 on Monday, before the news.