One of the busiest airlines in 2024’s first semester has been SAS. Scandinavian Airlines has had a lot to handle over the past months. The carrier is preparing to finally exit Star Alliance and join its new investors Air France-KLM in Skyteam. That is all set to take place in early September. Also, the airline just recently announced a remarkably interesting partnership with Lunar for a co-branded debit card. In this post though I’ll be looking more at the operational side of things. I’ll be giving you a closer insight in Scandinavian Airlines’ June 2024 passenger figures.
Passengers Up but Only Thanks to Higher Capacity
Scandinavian has announced some solid figures for the first summer month of 2024. June is the time of the year when, European airlines most of all, start seeing the influx of leisure travel and its financial benefits.
SAS closed the month with 2.461 million passengers transported. That figure remained quite consistent with what the airline achieved in the same month of 2023. Last year the airline had carrier 2.386 million passengers. That translated to an increase of 3.1% YoY.
However, the increase didn’t come from the airline’s ability of being more efficient on filling its planes. SAS’s load factor in June 2024 clocked in at 80.7%, marginally up from 80.5% in 2023. That in other words is a very small increase that doesn’t account for the increase in passengers.
That increase has more to do with the increase in available seats the airline has this year. KPIs that measure this, ASK and RPK (available seat per kilometer and revenue seats per kilometer) are both up by quite a margin with 2023.
ASK for June 2024 was 4.313 million, up from 4.003 million in 2023, while RPK was 3.480 million, up from 3.221 million in 2023. Therefore, it is the increase in available seats to have driven the overall passenger growth.
A Good Result Ahead of Crucial Q3 and Skyteam Entry
The numbers published for June 2024 are good an in line with expectations. June is quite an important month as it kind of sets the tone for the crucial Q3. Q3 is the most important quarter of the year for European carriers as that is when most of the tourist influx taxes place from the US and other high yield long range markets.
Also, it is important for the airline to have some good performances in the coming months to enter the new alliance on the right foot. Scandinavian will be entering Skyteam after having been in Star Alliance since day one having been one of the founding members.