NEW YORK, November 20, 2017 – The operating results for October 2017 are given in the table below.

In October 2017, SIA Group airlines' passenger load factor (PLF) improved 4.1 percentage points to 80.8%. Passenger carriage (measured in revenue passenger kilometres) increased 8.3% compared to last year, outpacing capacity (measured in available seat kilometres) injection of 2.8%.

Singapore Airlines' PLF improved 2.8 percentage points to 80.2%. Passenger carriage increased 4.9% compared to last year, against a 1.2% increase in capacity. All route regions improved due to stronger passenger demand. The operating landscape remains competitive and efforts to stabilise yields are ongoing.

SilkAir’s systemwide passenger carriage grew 24.6% year-on-year, surpassing capacity growth of 13.6%. Consequently, PLF improved by 6.5 percentage points to 73.8%, led by strong growth in demand in India, China, Thailand, Malaysia and Australia. During the month, SilkAir launched its inaugural flight to Hiroshima on the brand new Boeing 737 Max 8 aircraft. In addition, SilkAir took over Yangon services from Scoot as part of a move intended to optimise SIA Group's resources.

Scoot recorded passenger carriage growth of 18.5%, exceeding capacity expansion of 6.0%. Consequently, PLF went up by 9.1 percentage points to 85.8%, boosted by improvements in all route regions. PLF on selected routes to India, China, South East Asia, as well as fifth freedom routes to North Asia continued to improve. During the month, Scoot took over Kuching services from SilkAir, and this expands Scoot's network to five destinations in Malaysia.

Overall cargo load factor (CLF) was 1.6 percentage points higher, with growth in cargo traffic (measured in freight-tonne-kilometres) of 1.8% against capacity reduction of 0.5%. CLF improved across all regions except Americas and Europe, as demand outpaced capacity changes.