PLAY Enjoys Strong March Performance With Load Factors Exceeding 80%
The airline’s passenger numbers were also more than three times higher than in March 2022.
As Icelandic low-cost startup airline PLAY approaches two years since it commenced operations in June 2021, the carrier is going from strength to strength. After posting record sales figures in February, its strong performance continued into March, with load factors exceeding 80%, and almost 90,000 passengers carried.
Significant year-on-year growth
The number of passengers that an airline carries in a month is a good way of measuring how it is performing, not just in isolation, but also in terms of charting wider trends. In PLAY’s case, March 2023 saw it transport a grand total of 86,661 customers, compared to 63,949 the previous month, and just 23,700 for March 2022.
This means that year-on-year, PLAY’s March passenger numbers have almost tripled. While the addition of new routes and aircraft has obviously played a role in this, the airline appears to be growing within its means as its load factor has also risen. Indeed, while its flights were 67% full in March 2022, this figure rose to an impressive average of 80.6% last month, which is a very promising sign indeed.
PLAY’s average load factor is also seeing short-term growth. Having risen from 76.8% in January to 76.9% in February this year, March’s figure of 80.6% represented a steeper increase. The airline will certainly be hoping to build on this as it heads towards a summer in which it will relaunch flights to Amsterdam Schiphol (AMS).
Other operational aspects
PLAY is well known for being a carrier that leverages its location between North America and continental Europe to offer low-cost connecting itineraries between these two land masses. This was reflected in its data for March 2023, which saw 35% of its passenger’s transit at its Keflavík International Airport (KEF) hub. March was also another record sales month for PLAY, with CEO Birgir Jonsson stating:
“We see our average revenue growing, even as we nearly double our capacity. Furthermore, we see record sales month after month, resulting in a healthy cash position coming out of this traditionally challenging first quarter. Load factors and passenger numbers are growing significantly, and the booking flow and status for the summer is very strong”
Punctuality is an important factor for all of an airline’s passengers, but especially those connecting from one flight to another. With more than a third of PLAY’s customers doing this, timely arrivals are particularly imperative, and the airline recorded an 87.4% punctuality rate last month. The carrier called this “a very impressive achievement (…) during challenging winter operations in Iceland.”
Quarterly trends
With the first three months of 2023 has now been and gone, PLAY was also able to reflect on its results in the first quarter of the year in its latest performance report. All in all, this period saw 212,408 passengers step onboard its red-liveried Airbus narrowbodies, resulting in an average load factor for the quarter of 78.4%.
Meanwhile, the airline’s overall punctuality rate for the quarter came to 85.5%. With this being slightly lower than the figure achieved in March 2023 alone, this suggests that PLAY ended the quarter on an upwards trajectory in this regard, which bodes well for the coming month. The airline notes in conclusion that the figure marks “a considerably better performance than the airline’s major competitors.”
Source: https://simpleflying.com/
