Summary
- Singapore Airlines Group has made a strong recovery with load factors exceeding pre-pandemic levels in October 2023.
- Scoot performed exceptionally well, surpassing 2019 passenger numbers and load factors by a significant margin.
- Singapore Airlines is expanding its Kris+ app in Australia, allowing users to earn and redeem miles at partner businesses and providing more options for members of its KrisFlyer program.
Each month, the Singapore Airlines Group edges closer to pre-pandemic passenger numbers and at the same manages to operate at high load factors that exceed those achieved in 2019. The Group has squared the circle by adding the right amount of capacity at the right time to balance demand with seats and will now emerge stronger than before the pandemic arrived in the island state.
Scoot is already fully recovered
In October, the Singapore Airlines Group, comprising Singapore Airlines and low-cost carrier Scoot, carried 3.09 million passengers, growing year-on-year by 36.1% compared to the 2.27 million carried in October 2022. The group increased capacity (available seat kilometers) by 23% and passenger traffic (revenue passenger kilometers) by 24.5%, raising the year-on-year load factor by one percentage point to 87.4%.
Photo: Scoot
In pre-pandemic October 2019, the Group, which then included SilkAir, carried 3.24 million passengers at a load factor of 84.4%, which shows it is now 95% recovered to pre-COVID passenger traffic volumes. Notably, it is achieving load factors three percentage points higher than in 2019, another illustration of its gains post-pandemic.
The Group standout for October was Scoot, which significantly exceeded 2019 passenger numbers and load factors. In October, Scoot carried 1.09 million passengers at a load factor of 88.9%, a growth of 47.2% and 2.7 percentage points compared to October 2022. For the same month in 2019, Scoot transported 899,000 passengers at 85.6% compared to 1.09 million at 88.9% this year, exceeding pre-pandemic passenger numbers by 22%.
Scoot reports its load factors by three regions: East Asia, West Asia and the Rest of the World, with the latter including its very popular markets in Australia. For October, the load factor in East Asia was 87.3%, West Asia 87.1%, and the Rest of the World reached 94.5%.
Photo: Bradley Caslin | Shutterstock
Singapore Airlines carried 1.99 million passengers at 87% in October, growing traffic numbers by 29.2% year-on-year with the load factor virtually unchanged. In October 2019, the total number of passengers carried by Singapore Airlines and SilkAir was 2.34 million, while Singapore Airlines on its own carried 1.93 million.
In October 2023, Singapore Airlines’ load factor of 87% came from East Asia (84.6%), The Americas (86.9%), Europe (86.9%), South West Pacific (92.9%) and West Asia and Africa (83.4%). The strong performer is again Australia, where the airline is operating 115 weekly services in November.
KrisFlyer gets a boost in Australia
Today, Singapore Airlines announced it was expanding its Kris+ lifestyle rewards app in Sydney and Melbourne. The Kris+ app allows users to earn and redeem miles at partner businesses, such as cafes, restaurants and bars outside of Singapore for the first time.
Photo: Singapore Airlines
This move makes Kris+ the first lifestyle, rewards and payments mobile application affiliated with a frequent flyer program available in multiple countries. The app was launched as a Beta version in Australia today, with miles earn and redemption capabilities available in the CBDs of Melbourne and Sydney. The airline expects around 100 partner merchants to join the program within the first month, benefiting the more than 1.3 million KrisFler members based in Australia.
The Kris+ app has already been downloaded more than 2.1 million times globally, with more than 100,000 of those downloads happening in Australia, which has the largest KrisFlyer membership base outside of Singapore. Australians traveling to Singapore can also use the Kris+ app while there, giving more possibilities to extend their miles earn and redemption choices.
Privileges and discounts are also available across 15 other cities in the Singapore Airlines network, including India, Japan and Thailand. In Australia, Kris+ offers an earn rate of up to three miles for every dollar spent at participating merchants via Apple Pay or Google Pay on the app. Customers also have the option to redeem their earned miles at a rate of 150 miles for AU$1 ($0.67) off their bill.