SIA, Scoot flew 2.8 million passengers in May, up 66% year on year

SINGAPORE - Singapore Airlines (SIA) and its budget carrier Scoot served 2.8 million passengers in May, a year-on-year increase of 65.8 per cent.

This came amid “strong demand for air travel”, SIA said in its monthly operating results on Thursday.

Scoot itself flew more than one million passengers in the month, more than double the 418,700 passengers in the same month in 2022. SIA saw a 41.7 per cent increase in the number of passengers to 1.8 million.

The company noted that passenger traffic and load factors were “robust” across all route regions.

The group passenger capacity for May was up 33.7 per cent, while the group passenger load factor (PLF) came in at 88 per cent, 9.8 percentage points higher than the previous year.

SIA posted a monthly PLF of 87.2 per cent, while Scoot recorded a monthly PLF of 90.7 per cent.

As at end-May, the group’s passenger network covered 114 destinations in 36 countries and territories.

SIA served 74 destinations, while Scoot served 63. The budget carrier had also resumed services to the Chinese cities of Nanning and Shenyang in May.

Separately, SIA on Friday refuted a media report saying it may raise its stake in Air India from the 25.1 per cent which it secured as part of the Tata Group’s Vistara merger to create a bigger full-service Indian national carrier.

Its statement was in response to a report by Indian newspaper Mint, which said the carrier had expressed its desire to gradually raise its stake in the Indian airline to about 40 per cent.

“The Mint story dated 16 June 2023 is incorrect. There (is) no change in SIA’s position from the November 2022 announcement,” SIA said.

Last November, autos-to-steel conglomerate Tata had announced Air India’s merger with Vistara, its joint venture with SIA, in a bid to strengthen its presence in domestic and international skies.

THE BUSINESS TIMES

, REUTERS