SIA’s wings clipped by lacklustre European demand in December

The anticipated holiday boost didn’t help.

Singapore Airlines reported a decline in passenger carriage and overall system capacity in December. 

Although passenger load factor (PLF) improved for all regions on back of healthy year-end demand, PLF to Europe dropped by 1.9 points on back of soft passenger demand, particularly with a short-term dip in demand to France.

The flag carrier’s passenger carriage dropped 0.7% in December, against a 1.1% reduction in capacity.

SilkAir’s systemwide passenger carriage increased 8.5% year-on-year, slightly ahead of capacity growth of 8.4%. Consequently, PLF increased by 0.1 percentage points to 75.1%.
In December, Tigerair recorded a 1.4% decrease in systemwide passenger carriage, in line with capacity reduction of 1.4%. 

Scoot's systemwide passenger carriage increased by 38.5% year-on-year, faster than capacity growth of 38.0%. Consequently, PLF increased by 0.3 percentage points to 86%.

Overall cargo load factor (CLF) was 0.5 percentage points higher, with cargo traffic increasing 8.9% against overall capacity growth of 8.0%. Cargo traffic demand was boosted by a slight increase in number of ad-hoc charters mounted as compared to the previous year.