News
Singapore Airlines reports passengers carried down 50% in March
April 17th 2020
Singapore Airlines [SIA] has flagged that dramatic capacity cuts to its network for April may be extended should international borders remain shut due to COVID-19 after the airline group reported a halving of passengers in March. Read More »
Its monthly traffic report, published on April 16, showed full-service Singapore Airlines carried 665,000 passengers in March, down 62.9% from 1.8 million in the same month in 2019.
While capacity, measured by available seat kilometres (ASK) was 37.8% lower in March, the decline in demand, or revenue passenger kilometres (RPK), was more rapid, at 57.2%. As a result, load factor tumbled 25.3 percentage points to 55.7%.
The load factor decline was most severe in East Asia, with flights to that region falling 43.2 percentage points to 39.5%.
It was a similarly grim picture at SIA's low-cost carrier, Scoot, which suffered a 65.2% decline in passenger numbers, to 318,000. Load factor was down 16 percentage points to 69.5%.
"Market conditions deteriorated rapidly in March [2020] as the COVID-19 outbreak progressively spread throughout Europe, North America and beyond, and as border controls and travel restrictions became widespread across the globe," SIA said.
This month, SIA and regional wing, SilkAir, are operating just 4% of their normal schedules and Scoot approximately 2%. About 10 of the airline group's roughly 200 aircraft were in operation for the limited passenger network.
Reduced flying and other measures have cut costs, but SIA said much of the group’s expenditure was "unavoidable regardless of the number of flights mounted" and therefore did not fully offset the contraction in passenger revenue.
Additionally, the airline group said capacity cuts had led to the company being in an "over-hedged position with respect to fuel consumption", with those fuel hedges expected to generate substantial losses.
"Looking forward, the Group may need to extend these capacity cuts if border controls and travel restrictions remain in place and travel demand continues to be low," SIA said.
"Overall, the global COVID-19 outbreak is expected to have a material impact on the SIA Group’s financial performance in the fourth quarter of the financial 2019-20 year."
On a more positive note, SIA said cargo demand had held up, with the company continuing to operate its freighter aircraft as planned.
It had been "selectively deploying passenger aircraft on cargo-only flights to meet demand from global supply chains", given the reduction in passenger flights had led to less cargo capacity.
