SIA upbeat on financial year amid strong post-pandemic recovery

With five records broken in the six months ending Sept 30, Singapore Airlines remains predictably optimistic that it will end the current financial year on a high.

- Ven Sreenivasan 

At a briefing on Monday morning, where the mood among senior officials seemed cheery for the first time in almost three years, chief executive Goh Choon Phong painted an upbeat picture of the airline's operating conditions.

"We are recovering strongly from the Covid-19 era," Mr Goh said.

"Besides strong passenger ticket sales, we are also capturing cargo demand. Meanwhile, we are expanding our sales and marketing outreach, have revamped our premium lounges, and have started recruiting pilots and cabin crew." For the first half of the financial year ending Sept 30, the airline group reported a record operating profit of $1.23 billion. It also had a record operating profit of $678 million for the July-September quarter, record quarterly group passenger load factor of 86.6 per cent, record quarterly revenue per available seat kilometre of 10.3 cents, and record quarterly group revenue of $4.49 billion.

Net profit for the six months to end-September swung around by some $1.76 billion to $927 million, translating into earnings per share of 14.4 cents.