Singapore Airlines carried only 300 passengers per day in April

Singapore Airlines released its traffic statistics for April 2020 earlier this evening, which paints a bleak picture of the falloff in demand as a result of travel lockdowns across both the Asia-Pacific region and the world, with the airline carrying 99.5% fewer passengers compared to the same month in 2019.

The news came only a day after the airline group revealed its first ever annual loss of S$212 million, due to the COVID-19 outbreak and significant fuel hedging losses.

“In April 2020, the SIA Group’s airlines recorded a 99.6% year-on-year decline in passenger carriage… as travel demand was severely impacted by the Covid-19 pandemic, with border controls and travel restrictions remaining in place around the world. Overall passenger capacity… was cut by 96.3% in response. Passenger load factor… fell to 9.1%.” Singapore Airlines

Singapore Airlines

SIA typically welcomes over 1.7 million passengers on board its aircraft each month, close to 60,000 per day.

In contrast, the mainline carrier flew only 9,200 passengers in April 2020, on 307 passenger flights – an average of just 320 passengers per day and the equivalent of only 30 passengers on every aircraft.

That’s even lower than recently reported by Cathay Pacific, who carried only 13,729 passengers in April 2020 (around 460 per day).