News
Vaccinated Travel Lanes give Singapore Airlines a traffic ‘uptick’
October 18th 2021
Singapore Airlines (SIA) appears on track to reach a predicted 37% of pre-COVID levels by its third financial quarter as it continues to expand services and benefit from Vaccinated Travel Lane (VTL) arrangements. Read More » SIA’s latest figures show passenger traffic in September was 4.4% higher than August after passenger load factor increased 1.0 percentage points. The airline attributed much of the month-on-month rise in load factor to “a positive pick-up” on Frankfurt and Munich FTL services. It said there was more to come after the announcement earlier this month that it would VTL arrangements to include Canada, Denmark, France, Italy, the Netherlands, South Korea, Spain, the UK and the U.S. “This further supports the safe and gradual recovery in international air travel to and through Singapore,’’ SIA said, and added seasonal services to Vancouver and Seattle and Scoot’s direct services to Berlin would bring the VTL network to 17 cities. Other additions include the resumption of Frankfurt-New York and Hong Kong-San Francisco flights from early November and resumed A380 operations to London from November 18. “Based on our current published schedule, the Group expects passenger capacity to reach around 37% of pre-COVID levels by the third quarter of FY2021/2022,’’ the airline said. The SIA Group carried 159,700 passengers in September, up from 42,600 in the same month a year ago. It recorded a 1.3 percentage point increase in load factor, to 18.5%. Capacity was at about 32% of pre-COVID levels.
