Brussels Airlines' loadfactor

[tolipanebas]

The official statistics from the AEA for May aren't available yet, but April's loadfactor was 68%, which is not bad indeed.

Considering SN is massively increasing capacity with the introduction of 6 Airbus A319 and A320 planes to replace some AVRO RJs, it is good to see not only are they are able to attract far more pax with their reviewed commercial strategy, but on top of that are also able to let their LF rise considerably!

As such, SN are successful in filling more than just the extra capacity they've put on the market, something which is really good as very often an aggressive capacity expansion is followed by a negative hit on the LF and it was feared by some such a scenario would also happen here, thus basically wiping away any unit cost benefits of the capacity ramp up.

Just to put the growth in perspective: SN has increased its ASK (thus capacity) with almost 19%, Turkish Airlines which is well spoken off on this site, increased its capacity with just under 21% over the same period according to data available from the AEA, so the ramp up at SN is indeed considerable even though it does not come through opening new routes/frequencies like at TK, but from operating larger planes on existing routes and frequencies; at TK the loadfactor took a hit of well over 3% because of the aggressive expansion. In contrast, loadfactors at SN even rose.

[Boeing767copilot]

SN figures june '11

526.319 pax (+17,5 pct)
Intra EU: +17,8 pct
Africa: + 14,8 pct
LF: 69,3 pct (+5,1 pp)

source: Travel Magazine Aviation Newsletter

[sn26567]

source: Travel Magazine Aviation Newsletter

And before that, also Luchtzak: viewtopic.php?p=251666#p251666

[tolipanebas]

It's been a while since figures were posted here, but let's revert to an old habbit, shall we?

October figures for SN have been released last week:

Pax: 530,200 (+10,1%)
LF: 68,0% (+4,3%)

source: http://www.aea.be

[fretn]

It's great to see that despite the end of the summer season the loadfactor doesn't reflect it! Let's hope the winter will be mild to SN.

[RoMax]

November figures:

Pax: 415,600 (+ 6,3%)
LF: 63,4% (+5,3%)

Source: AEA

I expected to see a bigger impact of the reduced capacity in Europe (MAD, PRG, OSL, CTA, SVQ, PMI, BCN,...), but even with the reduced capacity to certain destinations a quite nice increase in pax (and loadfactor, again).

With one month to go the current YTD numbers are:

Pax: 5 299 700 (+17,3%)
LF: 66,6% (+3,3%)

So already (much) higher than the total amount of pax in 2010, and this is without December...

[RoMax]

A bit more details about November:

Pax: 415,600 (+ 6,3%)
LF: 63,4% (+5,3%)

Africa: + 10,1%
Europe: + 5,8%
Total capacity in November: -2,5%

This reduced capacity is due to the reduced capacity to several European destinations, but still a nice growth in Europe...

(charter flights are not included)

[RoMax]

AEA numbers December 2011 and 2011 in total:

December 2011:
- Pax: 389 500 +5,2%
- LF: 65,7% +4,8%
- Traffic (RPK): +4,5%
- Capacity (ASK): -3,1%

I assume the decreased ASK is due to the reduced capacity to several EU destinations this winter?

2011 total numbers:
- Pax: 5 689 200 +16,3%
- LF: 66,5% +3,5%
- Traffic (RPK): +16%
- Capacity (ASK): +10%

After all 'not a bad year' on the operational side, now the financials have to come...
But I suppose 2012 is going to be less than 2011...long haul is expanding with JFK and more flights to AFI, but now already we see less flights in Europe and after the summer even more flights may be suspended.

[Boeing767copilot]

Januari 2012
- Pax: 365.048 +4,9%
- LF: 63,1% + 8,9%
- Traffic (RPK): +5,4%
- Capacity (ASK): -9,5%

[RoMax]

Seems to show SN's strategy is 'working'. Reduce total capacity, mainly on 'seasonal' routes and routes that have to important task in the hub strategy. While focussing on long haul and EU flights that are important for feeding and/or business trafic. So in total you have a reduced capacity but more pax and thanks to that a much higher loadfactor.

But what I thought when reading this, was that the LF in January 2011 must have been really bad... LF went up 8,9% but it still just at 63,1% which is not high at all (for SN it's not bad tough, they always had a quite low LF).

[RoMax]

For March:

- Pax: 458,837 +2,8%
- Loadfactor: 63,6% +5,4%
- Traffic (RPK): 657,89 +1,5%
- Capacity (ASK): 1034,45 -7,1%

For the period January 2012- March 2012

- Pax: 1,197,661 +4%
- Loadfactor: 62,6% +6,4%
- Traffic: (RPK): 1800,85 +3,6%
- Capacity (ASK): 2874,99 -7%

So in contrast to the financial side of the company they seem to do quite well on the operational side. Their capacity is reduced quite a bit to save money on loss making routes (and this will go even further later this year), but despite the capacity reduction they achieve a growth in pax numbers and as a result of the reduced capacity and more pax the loadfactor risis significantly again.
I think this must be the first time (or one of the few times) they achieved such a loadfactor in the first quarter, altough still lower than the European average.

[DannyVDB]

Does anyone have the separate figures for February. They are not in the previous posts
Danny

[sn26567]

Does anyone have the separate figures for February. They are not in the previous posts
Danny

It appears indeed that SN did not publish a press release for its February statistics. In the past, such statistics could be retrieved within the AEA figures, but now, for competition reasons, AEA does not publish the individual airlines' figures. The global AEA statistics for February can be found here: http://files.aea.be/News/PR/PRTU12-02.pdf

One can also try to guess the SN figures by looking at the Brussels Airport statistics for February: viewtopic.php?f=31&t=46960 (passengers traffic up 7.8%).

[RoMax]

viewtopic.php?f=31&t=47392

For the first month of the summer season (April):

- Pax: 508,140 +4.4%
- Loadfactor: 68,2% +0.1%
- Traffic (RPK): 756.92 +5.5%
- Capacity (ASK): 1,109.54 +5.4%

The possitive number for capacity is probably due to to the increase in capacity on the long routes (Africa, DME and TLV), because Europe has quite some capacity reductions compared to April 2011.

For Africa there was a 11% increase in pax numbers (thanks to the increased nummber of flights to Abidjan, Douala, Yaounde, ...), in Europe still 3.6% despite the reductions on several routes compared to last year.

[Boeing767copilot]

June 2012:
Passengers 540.409 (+ 2,7pct)
Load Factor 69,8% (+0,5 pct. points)

jan-jun 2012:
Passengers: 2.762.922 (+3,1 pct)
Load Factor (+3,3 pct. points)

[RoMax]

And some other important numbers:

- Pax to/from Africa: up with 16%
- Pax to/from JFK in June: 13.113
- Average loadfactor to/from JFK: 78,3%

[DannyVDB]

Hi all,

Not too bad, although I think that European figures are going down (but not only for SN).

Question: where do you get the figures from? Before they were published by AEA, but that's not the case anymore. Connected to that: I miss the figures for February and May: anyone knows #pax and LF for these two months?

Regards,
Danny

[sn26567]

Question: where do you get the figures from??

viewtopic.php?p=266649#p266649

I miss the figures for February and May: anyone knows #pax and LF for these two months?

May: viewtopic.php?f=31&t=47633
SN did not release figures for February!

[DannyVDB]

Thanks André,
With source I rather meant where eventually we can find the 'files' with the details. Otherwise we have to rely on the press releases ...
Cheers,
Danny

[RoMax]

Thanks André,
With source I rather meant where eventually we can find the 'files' with the details. Otherwise we have to rely on the press releases ...
Cheers,
Danny

The extra information is often also in their press releases. The information I gave about the AFI pax and the JFK flights was given by SN itself (I found it in an online article of De Tijd).