Singapore Airlines reports ‘robust’ passenger demand — will the momentum continue?

The Singapore Airlines Group (SIA) is starting the new calendar year on a strong note. SIA said Monday that passenger traffic across its airlines rose 8.6% in January versus a year earlier. Notably, the figure tracks well ahead of a 5.5% increase in capacity. This is good news for the company, as it means its planes are busier, despite operating more flights overall. SIA credited the Lunar New Year holiday season as a partial driver for “robust travel demand.” The multi-day celebration falls on different dates each year, based on the start of the new moon cycle. This is typically between January 21 and February 20 using the Western calendar. In 2025, the New Year was on January 29, compared to February 10 in 2024. This brought much more of the travel surge into January’s traffic figures, flattering year-on-year comparisons. The Group is best known for operating Singapore Airlines, however, it also owns a low-cost carrier called Scoot and an air cargo operation. Digging into the numbers in more detail, the passenger load factor at Singapore Airlines – a key industry metric indicating how many seats on an average aircraft are occupied – reached 87.2% in January. This was up 3 percentage points compared to January 2024. Partly driven by the timing of the Lunar New Year, the East Asia region led the charge, with an impressive 5.8 percentage point rise. However, the region with the busiest flights overall was the South West Pacific at 93.7%. This area includes key markets for Singapore Airlines including Australia and New Zealand – both of which enjoy a peak summer surge at the start of the new calendar year. <br/>