Singapore Airlines Gets Closer to Pre-COVID Occupancy

At Singapore Airlines Group, the pace of growth is picking up with November passenger capacity surpassing 75% of pre-COVID-19 levels.

The capacity of the group, which includes Singapore Airlines, Scoot, and other airlines, nearly doubled in November 2021, year-on-year.

Profits are being made from load factors

While comparisons to 2021 are rapidly becoming obsolete, they are useful to remind us of how badly COVID-19 harmed airlines. Focusing again on the SIA Group in 2021, it had 302,300 passengers. Twelve months later, however, that number had risen exponentially to 2.406 million, a remarkable 696.2% increase. The passenger numbers are one thing. But the real money is in the passenger loads factors (PLF), which show dramatic changes.

The group's planes averaged 29% loads last November, which means that seven of every ten seats were empty. This is because there are 253 seats in a Singapore Airlines Airbus A350 900. With a 29% passenger load factor, that means that the plane can fly with only 73 passengers paying their fare. The Group's average load factor was 85.9% last month. That means that 217 passengers paid their money, resulting in three times as much revenue.

Although this simple analysis doesn't take into account different travel classes, it highlights why airlines are keeping their capacity tight now that the good times have returned. Passengers are the ones paying the price for this with sky-high fares and no deep discounting from revenue-hungry low-cost carriers. We may see increased capacity in East Asia, and talk of China's reopening, in time to enjoy the Lunar New Year travel boom.

Singapore Airlines (SIA), which carried 1.616 million passengers in November, continued its steady monthly growth of 5% compared to October. Last month's load factor was 86.1%. This is a slight decrease from 86.5% in October. Most notable was the East Asia region. Loads rose to 80% due to eased travel restrictions in Japan and South Korea.

SIA Group is experiencing growth in Australia

Scoot and SIA have over 140 weekly flights to eight Australian destinations each week from the South West Pacific. This is where Scoot and SIA are most prominent. SIA was the only airline that maintained services during the pandemic. It has been flying to Australia since 1967. It was an important player in keeping Australians connected, as well as maintaining export and freight lines for exporters. SIA uses a mixture of six aircraft depending on the destination. These include the Airbus A380, A350, Boeing 737-8, 777-3000ER, and 787-10.

Scoot continues to recover steadily and added 8.3% monthly passengers. It carried 790,500 passengers in November. This is an increase of 729,000 passengers in October. However, this figure is still well above the 29,600 passengers it will carry in November 2021. Its PLF is stable at around 85% with East Asia at 78% and West Asia at 86%, while the Rest of the World is at 96.4%.

Scoot currently has 48 of its 60 aircraft in flight, according to ch-aviation.com. There are 10 Airbus A320-200s, two Boeing 787-8s, and two Airbus A320-200s. It does have some spare capacity that it can activate, as China (hopefully), continues its reopening. Looking further ahead, there are 25 aircraft ordered.

 

Source: simpleflying.com