In March 2011, Singapore Airlines recorded a 3.6% year-on-year decline in system wide passenger carriage (measured in revenue passenger kilometers) while capacity (measured in available seat kilometers) grew by 6.4%. As a result, passenger load factor (PLF) declined by 7.6 percentage points to 73.2%. The number of passengers carried decreased 1.9% over the same month last year to 1.38 million.
Capacity was added to several destinations, including Manchester (via Munich), Houston (via Moscow), Tokyo, Osaka and Seoul. The new Northern Summer season commencing March 27, 2011 also saw the launch of our thrice-weekly service to Sao Paulo via Barcelona and frequency increases to Taipei, Hong Kong, Male and Guangzhou.
All regions registered lower PLFs over the same month last year. PLF on Japan routes declined in the wake of the March 11 earthquake, and we have initiated capacity adjustments where required. Declines for the other regions were partly due to a smaller volume of low fare group and promotional traffic this year.
Overall cargo traffic (measured in freight ton kilometers) improved by 0.9% while cargo capacity increased by 6.9%. This led to a drop in cargo load factor (CLF) of 3.9 percentage points. Cargo load factor dropped for all regions as cargo traffic did not keep pace with capacity increases.