SINGAPORE – The arrival of new aircraft will open up four to six new destinations for Scoot and increase the low-cost airline’s capacity in 2025, even as it deals with lingering supply chain issues in the aviation industry.
Scoot chief executive Leslie Thng said the airline is expecting to receive 14 to 16 new aircraft in 2025. The delivery will comprise four Embraer E190-E2 narrow-body jets, seven to nine narrow-body Airbus A320s, and three wide-body Boeing 787s.
In a wide-ranging interview with the media on March 3, Mr Thng touched on subjects ranging from the current grounding of all six of Scoot’s Airbus A320neos over engine issues, to the airline’s declining on-time performance, which he blamed on weather-related events.
Besides opening up new destinations, the arrival of new aircraft will help Scoot serve some existing routes more frequently, he added.
Mr Thng did not provide more information about the new destinations, noting that the airline is still working out the details.
But he noted that more of the airline’s resources – including manpower and finances – are being allocated to South-east Asia, from around 20 per cent in 2024, to 24 per cent to 25 per cent in 2025.
Following closely behind is the Chinese market, to which Scoot devotes around 20 per cent of its resources, and North and East Asia – including South Korea and Japan.
Scoot – the budget arm of Singapore Airlines (SIA) – also serves Europe, and it will launch non-stop 13-hour flights to Vienna in Austria from June.
This is where Scoot and its full-service parent company tap each other’s networks to carry travellers through Singapore and take them to other destinations, said Mr Thng.
In particular, he noted that travellers on SIA’s flights from other parts of the world can connect to Scoot’s flights to South-east Asia via Singapore.
Scoot’s flights to Vienna could also serve as a gateway to Eastern Europe for travellers from Singapore and South-east Asia, said Mr Thng.
The airline evaluates the viability of new routes by studying the types of customers it can attract from a new route and looking at other markets that customers would be interested in flying to via Singapore, he added.
However, the airline’s long-haul route between Berlin in Germany and Singapore did not work out, and will be suspended after its last flight on March 28.
Mr Thng cited commercial considerations and aircraft utilisation as key reasons why the airline felt it was no longer commercially viable to continue operating the route.
“Berlin had started off (with) certain projections back then, which is different from what we observed post-Covid-19.”
Asked about the performance of the E190-E2s, which were first added to Scoot’s fleet in April 2024, Mr Thng said the 112-seat regional jets have helped to expand the airline’s footprint in South-east Asia. These jets allow the airline to “right-size” supply to passenger demand, and improve the route economics for the region, he added.
Passenger load factor – a measure of the percentage of plane capacity utilised – for E190-E2 flights has been consistently strong, at a percentage of “at least the high 80s” since the first service took off in May 2024, Mr Thng said.
The airline is also reviewing if these E190-E2s can be deployed on new routes in the region, and to increase the frequency of certain short-haul services such as to Phu Quoc in Vietnam, said Mr Thng.
According to the latest figures published by SIA Group in February, Scoot had a capacity of 27.95 billion available seat-km from April to December 2024, up from 27.76 billion during the same period in 2023. This refers to the number of available seats for passengers multiplied by the distance flown.
The airline saw a drop of 2.8 percentage points in its passenger load factor over the same period. The airline had 88.2 per cent of its capacity utilised from April to December 2024, compared with 91 per cent during the same period in 2023, a year which saw pent-up travel demand after the Covid-19 pandemic.
Additionally, Scoot’s yields – the amount earned per passenger for each kilometre flown – dipped 4.3 per cent, from 6.9 cents over the last nine months of 2023, to 6.6 cents over the same period in 2024.
Mr Thng attributed the decline of $72.8 million in Scoot’s operating profits during the last nine months of 2024, down 74.3 per cent from the same period in 2023, to its declining yields and passenger load factor.
He said Scoot had a passenger load factor exceeding 90 per cent from mid-2023 to March 2024 because of pent-up travel demand and a lower supply of available flights.
The low-cost carrier mounted a record number of flights in the early days of recovery from the Covid-19 pandemic.
By November 2023, it had restored more than 90 per cent of its pre-pandemic network and increased its flight capacity to 3 per cent to 4 per cent more than at pre-pandemic levels.
While Scoot has reinstated its flight capacity beyond pre-pandemic levels, Mr Thng noted that other airlines within the region have similarly caught up.
Growth has been stagnant in the airline’s flight capacity to and from China, which still remains at around 80 per cent of pre-pandemic levels, due to greater competition from more Chinese carriers operating the same routes, said Mr Thng.
He does not think this phase of stagnant growth will be a “steady state”, as the airline believes in the potential that outbound travel from China could bring to its network in South-east Asia.
On this, Scoot is trying to build its network of regional destinations, to make them attractive and appealing to Chinese passengers, Mr Thng noted.
Scoot has also not been spared the supply chain delays plaguing the aviation sector. Mr Thng said the airline has extended the leases of six A320ceos – the older variant of A320neo – to maintain the same capacity since manufacturing flaws in Pratt & Whitney engines grounded all six of its newest A320neo jets.
He noted that Scoot, together with SIA, invests in a vigorous maintenance programme, by stocking up on spare parts and spare engines that can be used to recover an aircraft during unplanned technical defects.
Mr Thng, however, acknowledged that the industrywide supply chain issues have prolonged the time needed to replace spares and repair engines, which has reduced the availability of aircraft.
Scoot has nonetheless built “as much resilience as possible” in its network, he added, by having standby aircraft that can be deployed as ferry flights to take passengers to their final destinations.
Ferry flights could be deployed in the event of a delay where the aircraft repair is taking longer than expected, if there are spare aircraft resources at that point.
Mr Thng noted that Scoot’s on-time performance in 2025 will be below that in 2024. He said 2025’s on-time performance will be lower than the mid-70s percentage range in 2024 for flights out of Singapore, due to delays caused by weather-related incidents in the Asia-Pacific.
Scoot chief executive Leslie Thng acknowledged that industrywide supply chain issues have prolonged the time needed to replace spares and repair engines.ST PHOTO: KEVIN LIM
The budget airline has been hit with complaints from travellers in recent months about its frequent delays or sudden cancellations.
In January, a Scoot flight from Kuala Lumpur to Singapore was delayed by almost 22 hours due to technical difficulties, with passengers made to embark and disembark twice.
In February, Scoot reinstated its payment processing fees for flights departing from Singapore, reversing its previous decision in 2019 to cover such costs in order to pass on the savings it had made to customers.
These savings had come from a reduction in the costs of supporting and maintaining the payment infrastructure as a result of technological improvements.
When asked about this U-turn on payment processing fees, Mr Thng said he did not see the move as a U-turn, as it was taken to partially cover the costs of providing and maintaining payment facilities in the post-pandemic environment.
On whether the delivery of the three Boeing 787s it is expecting in 2025 is confirmed, he said Scoot is working with the American plane-maker to get as many as it can.
Boeing has been dealing with production delays arising from disrupted shipments of parts and raw materials, worker turnover and other market turmoil still lingering from the Covid-19 pandemic.
Scoot has 12 Airbus A320s, six Airbus A321s, three Boeing 787s and four Embraer E190-E2s on order.
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