Singapore Airlines Group (SIA) says it expects to see a “calibrated expansion” of its passenger network as demand for air travel is likely to see “measured recovery” in the 2H2021 amid the rolling out of Covid-19 vaccines around the world.
Based on current schedules, the group says its passenger capacity is expected to be around 26% of pre-Covid-19 levels by May 2021.
SIA will reinstate scheduled passenger services to Haneda Airport in Tokyo in March, and will offer parallel services to Taipei alongside Scoot from April.
SilkAir will re-introduce its services to Cebu in March.
The outlook comes as the group reported its monthly operating results for February on March 15.
In a regulatory filing, the SIA Group reported a decline of 59.4 percentage points in passenger load factor (PLF) to 9.7% due to lower PLF contributions across all airlines.
SIA’s flagship carrier Singapore Airlines saw PLF drop to 9.8%, 57.6 percentage points lower y-o-y. Passenger carriage was down 95.9% y-o-y against a 72.2% dip in capacity y-o-y.
SilkAir’s passenger carriage dropped 97.3% y-o-y against a 94.9% y-o-y cut in capacity, leading to a 28.4 percentage point drop in PLF to 32.2%. In February, SilkAir added Phuket to its list of destinations served.
Scoot’s passenger carriage fell 98.8% y-o-y against 84.9% y-o-y lower capacity, resulting in a PLF of 6.0, 73.4 percentage points lower y-o-y.
On the other hand, SIA Cargo registered a record monthly cargo load factor (CLF) of 94.5%, 35.9 percentage points higher y-o-y as cargo traffic fell 27.1% y-o-y due to capacity contraction of 54.8%.
Shares in SIA closed 33 cents higher or 6.2% up at $5.63 on March 15.
