For the month of October 2020, the Singapore Airlines (SIA) Group has reported an 89.9% decline y-o-y in group passenger capacity, while overall passenger carriage fell 98.5% y-o-y.
As a result, group passenger load factor (PLF) was down 68.6 percentage points to 15.8%.
Singapore Airlines’ capacity fell 87.9% y-o-y. Passenger carriage for the airline fell 98.2% y-o-y while PLF fell 68.8 percentage points to 15.6%.
SilkAir's passenger carriage decreased by 98.2% y-o-y against a 98.7% cut in capacity, with a PLF of 33.7%.
Scoot’s passenger carriage declined 95.1% year-on-year against a contraction in capacity of 99.1%, which led to a PLF of 16.1%.
Cargo load factor registered 23.7 percentage points higher as the capacity contraction of 57.8% y-o-y outpaced the 41.7% decline in cargo traffic.
There were, however, bright spots during the month amid the re-opening of some borders.
The Singapore-Hong Kong air travel bubble that was first announced on Oct 15, is slated to begin flights between both countries on Nov 22.
See: Singapore and Hong Kong to scrap quarantine with travel bubble and Singapore and HK to start flights under Air Travel Bubble on Nov 22, limited to 200 per flight
Singapore also continued to add additional cities for passengers to transfer through Singapore to other destinations.
The “positive developments” have continued to support the group from the airlines’ ongoing recovery from Covid-19, says SIA in a Nov 16 statement.
The group says it is also progressively restoring its services and rebuilding its networks.
SIA will be launching its non-stop services to New York, while SIA and SilkAir will be reinstating flights to Brunei, Fukuoka (Japan), Male (Maldives) and Shenzhen (China) between November 2020 and January 2021.
Scoot will add flights to Melbourne between November 2020 and December 2020.
The frequency of selected existing services in the passenger network will also be increased.
“The SIA Group looks forward to a gradual recovery in passenger operations as countries explore means to facilitate the re-opening of borders. The group will continue to closely monitor demand patterns in international air travel, and be swift and decisive in deploying capacity,” it says.
Shares in SIA closed 4 cents higher or 1.0% up at $3.87 on Nov 16.
See also: Travel-related stocks SATS, SIA break out of key levels, taking STI to 5-month high and SIA gets a lift from potential Covid vaccine and travel bubble but recovery still nascent
