SINGAPORE: Singapore Airlines (SIA) Group’s overall passenger carriage for January fell by 97.3 percent year-on-year, as demand for air travel continued to remain “depressed” due to ongoing worldwide border controls and travel restrictions.
“Some governments further tightened measures in response to new waves of infections, and in an attempt to curb the spread of new variants of the COVID-19 virus,” mentioned the group as it announced on Monday its January working outcomes.
Passenger carriage, measured in revenue passenger-kilometers, for SIA, was down by 96.7 percent year-on-year in January, whereas SilkAir’s passenger carriage fell 98.4 percent year-on-year.
Budget carrier Scoot noticed its passenger carriage fall by 99 percent year-on-year.
In January, SIA reinstated Dubai, Moscow, and Munich services, and temporarily suspended services to Surabaya and Taipei. Flights to the USA saw an increase in frequencies.
SilkAir continued to operate flights to Chongqing, Kathmandu, Kuala Lumpur, Male, Medan, and Phnom Penh, whereas flights to Cebu were temporarily suspended from the network.
With the temporary suspension of services to Manila and Perth, the number of destinations served by Scoot in January stood at 17, including Singapore. Operations to South Asia and Europe remained suspended.
All route regions served by the SIA Group continued to record year-on-year increases in cargo load factor in January.
“SIA Cargo registered a record monthly cargo load factor of 89.2 percent in January as cargo load factor improved by 37 percentage points year-on-year. Cargo traffic, measured in freight tonne-kilometers, declined 17.6 percent on the back of a capacity contraction of 51.8 percent,” mentioned the group.
“One yr after the COVID-19 virus first started to spread around the world, the global roll-out of vaccines in many nations together with Singapore provides hope that an end could finally be in sight to the pandemic, and its debilitating impact on the aviation industry,” it added.
