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Singapore Airlines to halve capacity as COVID-19 restrictions tighten
March 20th 2020
Singapore Airlines (SIA) said this week it was cutting capacity by 50% in response to government-imposed travel restrictions that aimed to tackle the coronavirus pandemic and warned of potential further reductions in the months to come. Read More »
The 50% capacity reduction across the airline's network would apply until the end of April, SIA said on March 17.
And looking further ahead, the airline said the growing scale of border controls globally meant it expected further cuts to its capacity.
“We have lost a large amount of our traffic in a very short time, and it will not be viable for us to maintain our current network," SIA CEO, Goh Choon Phong, said in a statement.
"Make no mistake – we expect the pace of this deterioration to accelerate. The SIA Group must be prepared for a prolonged period of difficulty.”
SIA said it would consult with unions as part of efforts to cut costs, with additional measures to be announced once they had been firmed up.
The airline was also "actively taking steps" to build up its liquidity.
The Singapore government has bans in place for any travellers who have been in France, Germany, Italy and Spain within the previous 14 days from visiting or transiting through Singapore.
This week, it introduced more measures for travellers who have been to any of the Association of South East Asian (ASEAN) nations in the previous 14 days.
Under the new arrangements, short-term visitors from ASEAN nations would have to request approval to travel to Singapore from the Ministry of Health via an online application. The processing time was estimated to be between 14 and 21 days, SIA said on its website.
And once they arrive in the country, they would be issued with a 14-day stay-at-home notice.
The ASEAN regional grouping comprised Brunei, Cambodia, Indonesia, Laos, Malaysia, Myanmar, Philippines, Singapore, Thailand and Vietnam.
The United States government's ban on those from Europe visiting the U.S. had also led to the cancellation of SIA's fifth-freedom Frankfurt-New York and Manchester-Houston flights.
SIA's February traffic figures published on March 16 showed revenue passenger kilometres (RPK), an indicator of demand, across the airline group's Singapore Airlines, SilkAir and Scoot operations, fell 17% in the month, compared with the prior corresponding period.
Capacity, measured in available seat kilometres, was 2.4% lower. And with demand falling at a faster rate than capacity, load factors tumbled 12.1 percentage points to 69.1%.
