The travelers do not let SAS down. New traffic figures show that the airline flew 1.9 million passengers in March. Thus, SAS remains the largest airline in Scandinavia.
SAS increases the number of passengers for the second month in a row. At the same time, the airline managed to improve its load factor.
This shows new traffic figures from SAS published on 12 April 2023.
According to the figures, 1.9 million passengers traveled with SAS in March 2023. This is an increase of 33 percent compared to the same month last year. However, it is less than in March 2019, when 2.5 million passengers chose to travel with SAS.
In addition, the load factor increased by 7 percent and reached 76 percent for the period. This resulted in solid revenue growth for the airline.
Thus, SAS surpasses its fiercest competitor Norwegian.
However, Norwegian delivered strong traffic figures in March as well. According to the figures, 1.5 million passengers traveled with the low-cost airline in March. This is 60 percent more compared to the same month last year. The load factor was 81 percent, the company writes in the press release
The summer of 2023 will be busy for SAS and Norwegian
SAS had a load factor of 76 percent, which means that paying passengers were seated in more than seven out of 10 seats. This is an increase from 71 percent last month.
The positive development continues, as the company feels an increased demand:
“During the month, we have added ten additional routes and more frequencies for the upcoming summer and autumn. We are preparing for a busy summer season with in total 30 new routes added to the summer traffic program,” said Anko van der Werff, CEO for SAS Group, in the press release.
Norwegian also expressed great satisfaction with the passenger demand:
”March has been very solid month for Norwegian in terms of traffic figures. It marks the return of the summer schedule with a considerable ramp up in capacity. We very much look forward to welcoming a growing number of passengers on board over the summer months of 2023,” said Geir Karlsen, CEO for Norwegian, in the press release.
Karlsen also highlights Norwegian’s significantly higher booking figures, which, according to him, indicate that we are entering a busy summer with high demand for air travel.
In March, Norwegian had an average of 67 aircraft in operation, and 99.2 percent of scheduled flights were completed.
With this year’s summer program, Norwegian offers more than 300 routes to 114 destinations, including a number of completely new destinations.
Also read about Europe’s best airports according to a new passenger research.