SIA Group’s passenger traffic continues to rise in May amid 'strong recovery' in air travel

SINGAPORE: More than 1.7 million passengers flew on Singapore Airlines (SIA) and Scoot in May, a 14-fold increase from a year ago as the air travel sector continues to recover after border restrictions were eased in April.

The number of passengers in May was also up 17.4 per cent from the previous month, according to SIA’s latest operating results released on Wednesday (Jun 15).

SIA Group noted the "strong recovery" in air travel. “Apart from North Asia, travel demand recovered rapidly across all route regions,” it added.

Passenger capacity hit 61 per cent of pre-COVID levels in May, a 4 percentage point rise from the previous month. The company had said in April that it expects passenger capacity to hit 61 per cent of pre-pandemic levels by May.

The group passenger load factor was 78.2 per cent, the highest since the pandemic began. The figure is a 5.5 percentage point improvement from the month before and an increase of 63.9 percentage points from a year ago.

Cargo load factor fell by 22.3 percentage points year-on-year to 65.4 per cent in May. Cargo capacity grew 30.2 per cent on the back of passenger flight resumptions across the network.

Meanwhile, cargo loads fell 3.0 per cent as demand was affected by the COVID-19 restrictions in China.

SIA noted that in May, it resumed operations to Medan in Indonesia, while Scoot restarted services to the Chinese city of Nanjing.

As of end-May, SIA's group passenger network covered 97 destinations including Singapore. SIA served 72 destinations while Scoot flew to 46 destinations.

Singapore relaxed its border restrictions in April, removing the need for quarantine and on-arrival COVID-19 tests for fully vaccinated travellers. The requirement for pre-departure coronavirus tests was also removed.