SIA Group sees rise in passenger traffic

[SINGAPORE] Passenger traffic for Scoot rose by 17.4 per cent year on year in February, going by the latest operating results released by Singapore Airlines Group (SIA) on Monday (Mar 16).

The low-cost arm of SIA posted a passenger traffic of 3 billion revenue passenger-kilometres (km) in February, up from 2.6 billion in the year-ago period.

Passenger traffic measures demand for an airline’s service and is derived by multiplying the number of passengers carried by distance travelled.

The group posted a 3.8 per cent year-on-year increase in passenger traffic in February 2026 for its two carriers. Its passenger traffic came in at 12.3 billion revenue passenger-km, up from 11.8 billion in February 2025.

Passenger traffic for the group’s flagship airline SIA rose 0.1 per cent on the year to 9.3 billion revenue passenger-km.

Passenger load factor (PLF), which is the passenger traffic expressed as a percentage of passenger capacity, for the group fell 0.9 percentage point to 85.6 per cent from 86.5 per cent. SIA and Scoot posted monthly PLFs of 84.9 per cent and 88.1 per cent, respectively.

The two airlines of SIA carried 3.3 million passengers in February, up 7.2 per cent from 3.1 million in the previous corresponding period.

The group said that the improvement was supported by healthy holiday demand as a result of the shift of the Chinese New Year period from January in 2025 to February in 2026.

Cargo loads grew 8.8 per cent year on year, to 447.2 million tonne-km, from 411 million tonne-km in the year-ago period.

The group credited this to demand ahead of the Chinese New Year period. This came as capacity fell 0.5 per cent on the year and as cargo load factor rose 4.8 percentage points to 56.7 per cent.