On the back of significantly improved and recently reported half-yearly results, Singapore Airlines continues to rebound from the global travel downturn. The airline's just-released October traffic statistics show a significant improvement on the October 2020 numbers on nearly all metrics.

Better numbers, but still not ideal for Singapore Airlines

In October 2020, Singapore Airlines flew just 40,700 passengers and offered 1,372,300 available seat miles. Fast forward 12 months, and in October 2021, Singapore Airlines flew 165,500 passengers and offered 4,544,500 available seat miles. That's around a four-fold increase on both counts.

However, flying conditions are still far from ideal for Singapore Airlines - the average passenger load across October was 22.1%, better than the 15.8% average loads in October 2020, but still not great. However, Singapore is gradually reopening for business, and that is having positive flow through impacts on the national carrier.

"In October 2021, the Singapore Airlines (SIA) Group expanded its Vaccinated Travel Lane (VTL) network to include Denmark, France, Italy, the Netherlands, Spain, the United Kingdom, and the United States of America, in addition to Brunei and Germany," Singapore Airlines said in a statement issued on Tuesday.

"This enabled a meaningful resumption of travel between Singapore and these countries, and consequently led to an increase in passenger carriage on these routes."

Singapore's VTL network helps revive Singapore Airlines

Looking at October average passenger loads by region, only the Southwest Pacific went backward. That region saw average monthly passenger loads drop from 20.4% in October 2020 to 9.5% this October. Tougher limits on the number of passengers Singapore Airlines was allowed to bring into its biggest Southwest Pacific market of Australia contributed to that decline.

Elsewhere, average passenger loads increased. Compared to October 2020, average passenger loads in October 2021 for the Americas grew from 12.3% to 26.1%. Europe increased from 15.0% to 30.3%. East Asia edged up slightly from 14.4% to 15.9%. Finally, West Asia and Africa improved from 19.7% to 25.9%.

Singapore Airlines expects further improvements as more countries are added to the VTL network, saying;

"On the VTL front, the Group’s VTL network will also include Australia, South Korea and

Switzerland by November 2021. Canada will be added to the network when the seasonal

Singapore-Seattle-Vancouver services commence from December 2, 2021.

"In addition, the Group is finalizing flight schedules between Kuala Lumpur and Singapore. With these inclusions, the SIA Group’s VTL network will consist of 21 cities from 14 countries."

A mixed October for Scoot

When Singapore Airlines talks about the "Group," it includes its low-cost subsidiary Scoot and dedicated cargo operations. Scoot had a mixed October. Its capacity and flights shot up compared to October 2020, but average monthly loads in all regions decreased. The overall average passenger load for Scoot in October 2021 was 7.7% compared to 16.1% in October 2020.

But betting on a recovering travel market, Scoot isn't sitting still. It was serving 26 destinations by the end of October, including recently launched flights to Phuket and Jeddah.

After a few seasonal flights over the Christmas period, Scoot will start flying Singapore-Bangkok-London Gatwick in March 2022 on a year-round basis. Gatwick will be Scoot's third beachhead in Europe after already launching flights to Athens and Berlin.

As Singapore adds more countries to its VTL network and both Singapore Airlines and Scoot start filling their flights, these passenger traffic statistics will keep trending in an upwards direction.