Good morning everyone. Welcome to the Singapore Airlines Half Year Media and Analyst Briefing. I'm Siva Govindasamy from the Singapore Airlines Public Affairs Department. Very happy to see everyone here. We will start now at 9:00 A.M. We will go through the usual format. We'll first have a presentation on the financial results followed by a presentation on the group strategy and then the media Q & A session. And for those who are online, if you want to send some questions, that little chatbot will open for you and you can send your questions in there and we'll take them during the Q & A session. So without any further ado, please could I invite Bala gopal Kunduvara, Divisional Vice President, Financial Services to deliver the financial results? Bala, please.
Thanks, Siva. All right. Good morning, everybody, and it's my task today to take you through the first half results for the SIA Group. Let's start with the highlights. The headline is really we made an operating profit of SGD 796 million for the first half, 49% lower than a year ago, no doubt, but still with an operating profit margin of 8.4%. Let's look at the key components that made up this number. On the revenue side, revenue for the first half came in at SGD 9.5 billion, up 3.7% year- on- year. Looking at the two key components that make up the revenue, passenger flown revenue was up year- on- year driven by higher passenger traffic, partially offset by the lower yields as we saw increased capacity and competition in key markets. Cargo revenue was also up driven by higher loads as e-commerce demand remained strong.
And we also saw spillover effects from disruptions on the shipping side. Looking at the expenditure side, expenditure came in at SGD 8.7 billion for the first half, up 14% year- on- year. Again, looking at the two key components, net fuel cost was up almost 20% year- on- year, driven largely by one higher uplift for the first half as well as lower fuel hedging gain compared to the previous year. Non fuel costs were up 12.1% largely in line with the 10.6% increase in capacity year- on- year. What that meant is that net profit was at SGD 742 million, down 49% year- on- year, primarily driven by the operating profit numbers. The board has declared an interim dividend of 10% which is essentially the same as last year and this will be paid on the 11th of December 2024.
Before we go into the details, let's just also look at the operating results for the three main companies in the group. All three made profit for the first half for SIA and Scoot, the numbers were lower than last year and we will go into those details later. For Engineering Company, the scale of operations grew, revenue went up, expenditure went up as well. As a result, operating profit went up to SGD 3.4 million for the first half. Before we look at the financials, let's look at the capacity numbers. Since that represents the production the Group. For the first half, passenger capacity grew 11%, cargo went up 10.2%, and putting it together, overall capacity went up 10.6%. For Q2, the numbers were around 9.6%-9.7%, however you look at it.
Looking at the table, the traditional table of results, I already touched on some of this on the earlier slide. So this is just the same data, but I also have the Q2 numbers inside here. So let's now take a deeper look at the revenue and expenditure picture. Starting with revenue. On this chart you can see the quarterly progression of our group revenue, Q1 and Q2 revenue numbers were higher than the corresponding quarters last year. So let's look at the key metrics that make up the revenue. Essentially the unit revenue figure, RASK, as well as the passenger load factor. Now you can see that RASK came in at SGD 0.088 for first half while PLF was 86.4%. Both these numbers are lower year- on- year, but as the chart shows on the screen, it is significantly higher above the levels that we have seen pre-COVID.
So let's look at the individual airlines as well and you see a very similar picture where RASK still remains above the pre-COVID levels. Moving on to cargo. Cargo loads are up 20% relative to a capacity increase of 10.2% which actually led to the load factors moving up by 4.7 percentage points. Cargo yield continued to hover around the $0.36 mark for the third quarter running. Now let's look at expenditure. Again, we showed the quarterly progression and you can see that whether you look at it on a first half basis or a Q2 basis, the increase is roughly 14% year- on- year. So let's look at the key expenditure components. Many of these items here, such as staff costs, depreciation and leased aircraft charges, moved in line with the increase in capacity.
As for fuel, I'll touch that on a later slide, so let's focus on non fuel items first. So while some items moved in line with capacity, we also saw the impact of inflationary pressures on certain items like handling charges, as well as passenger costs which grew more than the capacity increase. M&O, on the other hand, was lower year- on- year as there were some adjustments made to redelivery provisions for leased aircraft. In the absence of that, the M&O increase would have come within the capacity increase. Fuel. As I mentioned on the first slide the fuel cost was higher, largely driven by two things, the higher uplift as well as the lower fuel hedging gain compared to last. Last year if you recall, we had the benefit of pre-COVID hedges as opposed to that this time around.
The hedge book is largely in line with prevailing forward prices. We also had some benefit from a slightly lower fuel price, but some of that was given up as U.S. dollars strengthened against Singapore dollars. I also have a slide here which shows you our hedge book as of the end of the, or middle of last month. As we have described before, we work off a declining wedge basis targeting 40%-50% hedge position for the nearest quarter and that is what this is. The lower part of the table just shows that we still have 2/4 of gains from pre-COVID hedges that were closed out which will be recognized as we go through the rest of the financial year. Putting it all together, the group operating profit was as shown on this chart.
The progression here clearly shows the moderation that the industry has or is going through after two extraordinary years. Let's also now try to look at the year- on- year progression here. As the previous slides have indicated, revenue actually increased but was not sufficient to offset the increase in costs. We have touched on most of the cost items here, but I'll just touch on the last bar under others where there was a SGD 69.1 million impact as we recognized a foreign exchange loss this year compared to a gain last year. This was largely due to the weakening of the US dollar against the Singapore dollar. When you compare across the two periods, net profit shows a very similar picture to what we saw for the operating profit number. Again, the moderation is quite evident in this chart.
Looking at the year- on- year progression you can see that the lower net profit was really driven by the weaker operating profit. Net interest income was also lower as our cash balances dropped year- on- year and there was also a loss on disposal of aircraft spares and spare engines compared to a gain last year. This was partially offset by a higher share of gains from our associates as well as lower tax expense which is largely driven by the weaker operating profit. Putting the financial results into a summary slide. The key metrics here, the EPS, the EBITDA and EBITDA margins are on the slide. They do you know they are lower than last year but I think I want to highlight again 8% plus operating profit margin and more than 24% EBITDA margin. These are very strong numbers compared to our historical performance pre- COVID.
We also have a chart to summarize the financial position of the group. Cash balances were down SGD 2.2 billion from 31 March 2024 largely because of two actions. One was the repayment of the final the remaining part of the MCBs as well as the dividend payment in August. I would also like to highlight that we are now showing an additional line here under cash balances so that you can also see the deposits that have been placed out with longer maturities and so you get a full picture of the liquidity of the group. Two more slides I wanted to touch on which is our typical half yearly update. The first one is the fleet plan. We are now expecting to end the financial year with an operating fleet of 204.
Now for those who compare that against our guidance from May 2024, you will notice that that's five aircraft less and that's essentially a result of five deliveries now expected to happen only in 2026 as opposed to within this financial year. My last slide is on the capital expenditure projections. These numbers are based on our contractual positions of the manufacturers. We have seen Boeing's message in October talking about the 777 delivery happening only in 2026. We can only determine the exact impact on our projections once we have certainty on our own delivery positions. And we'll give you an update on this during our future updates. With that, I come to the end of my part of the presentation and let me hand over to our CEO, Mr. Goh Choon Phong.
Thank you. So good morning everyone. Welcome to STC. Again. My presentation will be in two parts. I will talk a bit about the challenges facing industry and then I will talk about some of the strategic initiatives that we have taken that we believe will position the SIA Group well going forward. This should be a familiar chart. So I will elaborate on a couple of items on this chart. Firstly, about competition. So as you know, the competition came from also the largely from the additional capacity that's been injected in the industry. And as a result of the injection of capacity we are seeing softening of yield in this case relative to year before, which is the year 2023-24. You see the corresponding year decline in quarter one and quarter two. However, we must remember that the year 2022-23 and 2023-24 were exceptional years.
I believe all of you would recall that because of the preparedness that the SIA Group has done in ensuring that our resources were operationally ready throughout this pandemic period so that we can actually come back whenever that we see demand increase in the market, and in fact we were almost always the first to inject capacity in the market when the borders start to open. And as a result of that we're able to capture those early demand, the pent up demand at point in time. And as you would recall, during that period the demand far exceed capacity and therefore we were able to command a high yield during that two years. But if you look at in perspective the quarter one and quarter two yield in this financial year relative to the pre-Covid period, you see that it's a significant increase from the pre-Covid corresponding quarters.
In fact a 12% increase. Now of course on the other side you have unit cost. This is a unit cost ex-fuel during the 2022-24 financial year. And this is this financial year first two quarters. And you can see that relatively flat for this financial year over the two quarters. Of course, if you were then to compare with the unit cost pre-Covid, you could expect that this unit cost would have been higher. And indeed it is. But relative to the yield improvement that you see in the earlier chart for the corresponding quarter relative to pre-pandemic, the yield went up, you recall, about 12%. The unit costs have gone up 5%. You do expect the unit cost to have gone up because post-pandemic many costs have gone up. Bala earlier have showed you how the passenger cost as well as the handling costs have gone up.
Handling costs close to 20%, and we know why that's so, and the reason why we are still able to maintain a relatively flat unit CASK ex-fuel was because of the successful transformation that we've gone through and the ongoing continuous work that we're doing to make sure that the cost remain under control. Supply chain. This is a well-known issue in the industry affecting both new aircraft delivery as well as supply of parts. Here again, we have taken proactive actions even earlier on to ensure that you see all the bullet points up there is to allow us to have better access to spares and also to create local supply of spares as well as repair capability. Now many of the repair capabilities onshore are setups that has been done before.
SAESL, the Rolls-Royce joint venture Eagle, the joint venture with Pratt & Whitney and others, they actually allow us because the onshore capability ability for us to turn around those repair faster and therefore supporting the fleet in a more effective manner. Hence, despite the supply chain issue being around for quite a while, certainly the last couple of years we were able still to achieve a good increase in our capacity. This again should be a familiar change chart, and again I would like to highlight a few key areas that have the most changes, and these are the four key areas that I will touch on. Brand promise, we continue throughout COVID and even throughout the last quarters and going forward as well to ensure that we improve on our customer service, our product, and also to increase our network.
We have announced new flights, both Scoot's and SIA's, and continue to expand our capacity to meet demand out in the market. On product leadership, you would have heard our recent announcement to introduce the new products on our existing A350s. This will be a retrofit, and we will spend $1.1 billion on this retrofit product. In case you miss it, here is the video that we had announced together with the announcement. This is a business class. You would have heard about new product launches by other airlines during this couple of years.
Although these new products that we have been working on were meant to be introduced of course earlier with the 777 but with a delay in the delivery of 777-9 we continue to look at what enhancements we can make to this product that we newly designed from the ground up and to continue to improve it. Our customer experience division will always look at whatever new products are out there and check it against our product that is to be launched. At this point in time we remain confident that the products we are introducing will continue to be industry leading when it is introduced in 2026. This is another area to illustrate operational actions. You can see the number of KrisFlyer membership continue to go up. In fact, the last count you can see here in end of Q2 that it was reaching 9.4 million.
You can also see that the increase has been continuously strong, and if you compare to pre-COVID it has gone up more than double in terms of size. You can be rest assured that we will continue to leverage this membership so that we can reach out to more people and to encourage them to both fly on us as well as purchase other products that we have on offer. Scoot continues to take on new delivery of E2. In fact there are four right now. The fifth will come in by the end of this year and we expect four more to join the fleet next year. With that we'll be able to continue to increase our footprint, particularly in Southeast Asia. We also continue to forge stronger and wider partnerships across different areas in the industry, and two of the more recent developments are here.
You would have heard about it because we have made announcements about both collaborations or enhanced collaborations, in this case with IndiGo and Garuda. We'll be making another announcement very soon to update some of the collaboration efforts, and you should hear in the next few, I suppose, days or next week. Air India, we are almost completed with our merger between Air India and Vistara, so we will be of course making that announcement very, very shortly. Some of you might have noticed that the Vistara flights will be renamed to Air India flights sometime by the end of today, so you can expect the merger to take place very soon. So on the other impactful areas that we've been focusing on is the use of technology and in particular GenAI. And here are some of the quotes.
Some are comparing the impact of GenAI to electricity, to Internet and more. But what is very clear is that it is an area that we feel we must have a strong position in and continue to develop the capabilities. If you look at this chart, you would have noticed that we first noticed the impact, potential impact of GenAI way back in August of 2022. This is significant in that the ChatGPT was only introduced to the public in November of 2022 and since then we have done a lot to ensure that we acquire the right capabilities.
The GenAI blueprint was developed a year later from August of 2022, and in there we actually highlight, or rather we specify the focus that we will have in applying GenAI, the business area that we want to focus on, which I will elaborate a little bit later. It is also very clear to us that the way we want to introduce GenAI must be agile and we must be able to test ideas very quickly and to be able to let it go if it doesn't work. It is also very important for us to manage the risk associated with the introduction of this new technology.
And there are many, I mean, you would have heard about how GenAI can lead to hallucination and all that, plus the regulations that has been popping out from different parts of the world about how GenAI governance should be managed. All these are part of our GenAI blueprint that we put in place to ensure that as we adopt and develop our capabilities, we are able to manage the risk that are associated with it and the proper governance to guide its progress. I just want to point out one very important aspect which is people. It is a new technology and we believe it will be pervasive in order for us to be effective in using has to be something that the entire organization understand how to use it. We are paying a lot of attention on our people.
We want to bring our people along as we get on this GenAI journey. So far we have done quite a lot over 240 use cases of which 28 have been completed and introduced. There are various examples here. You can, you can actually read through the slides have been given out. Just give an example, the chatbot that Scoot used to have. With the introduction of the Gen AI chatbot and even at a very, I would say quite a, quite a rudimentary level, we have seen more than 20-point improvement in the customer satisfaction. So with those development that we have seen that I've updated earlier of the strategies that we have taken and importantly, where we are situated, we believe that we have a strong future.
If you look at it, ASEAN or Southeast Asia and India are widely recognized to be two of the highest growth regions in the world. ASEAN with its more than 670 million or so population, and India of course now the most populous state in the world, and we are well positioned.
On our own as a group to actually reach out to this growth region. In ASEAN itself, we serve 39 points between ourselves and Scoot, I mean SIA and Scoot, making us one of the biggest, if not the biggest operator or number of points in terms of number of points reached within Southeast Asia from one airline based in one country and India we have 13 points, and with that too we are one of the biggest airline operating to India in terms of number of points served outside the Indian based carriers, but not only that, not only just our network, we have been building partnership.
So in the case of ASEAN, we have had MOU signed over the last couple of years, last few years with all of the major ASEAN carriers and in particular we have been pushing for deeper collaboration with Garuda and Malaysia Airlines, because these two countries are the nearest to Singapore. Similarly for India, with the investment with the merger of Vistara and Air India, we will now have 25.1% of that combined entity. Now, the combined entity is not just Vistara and Air India, of course, it is also Air India Express and what used to be AirAsia India. So it is a sizable group again, like in the case of SIA Group, with the ability to tap into both full service and also to tap into the LCC market.
And importantly, with the Air India setup, it has also inherited both valuable rights to operate to key cities in the world as well as the slots associated with it. So with the investment, we're able to participate directly in that growth and we all know what's the growth potential that India could bring. Of course, Air India is going through transformation and we are determined to help Air India in the transformation efforts and journey. So with that, this is my last slide.
Again, to summarize it, we strongly believe that with all those strategic initiatives that we put in place, with geographical positions being situated in both the very high area of growth and also the unique opportunities that we have to participate directly the Indian market growth, that we will be able to handle the challenges that we have highlighted earlier and importantly to continue to be able to grow the group alongside with our partners. Thank you.
Thank you, Goh Choon Phong. We'll now move to the Q & A segment we will have. We're a little bit short of time today, unfortunately, so we need to keep it quite tight. So if I could please request for everyone to just stick to one question that will be much appreciated. I will call you when it's your turn. If you could please indicate your name and the organization that you represent, that will be useful for our records for those who are online. As mentioned earlier, you have functionality in the online system where you can type in your questions and we'll take it from there. So I would now, while we set up.
I would like to invite Goh Choon Phong and Bala back on stage, and to join them, we will have Lee Lik Hsin, our Chief Commercial Officer. We will have Tan Kai Ping, our Chief Operations Officer, as well as Leslie Thng, the CEO of Scoot, so let's start. Who'd like to go first, please? The gentleman over there, please. Thank you.
Good morning. Gurdip Singh from Press Trust of India. You are spending a lot of money on enhancing the experience of passengers traveling on your flights. Given the recent scare that we heard and read and reported on Air India flights, what are you doing in terms of in- flight security for passengers?
I can't comment on the specifics of security arrangement for confidentiality reasons for them to be effective. But we are in touch with all the security agencies around the world, including our Singapore Police Force as well as the U.S. TSA and so on. So the threat evolves and our security arrangement evolves. We are in full compliance with all the regulations as well as the guidelines from all security agencies.
Thank you, Kai Ping. Maybe we'll go to Danny over here and then-
Danny Lee from Bloomberg News. Good morning. Now noting the outlook, the airline talked about being nimble and agile going forward. Just looking at the presentation we look at second quarter capacity up 9.7% overall, first half up 11%. Can you give some color about how the capacity looks going forward? Is there likely to be significantly less capacity added into the market because of competition overall or are you holding back to wait and see how the market plays out? And then separately on that, where is the intensifying competition coming from? Is it more short haul or is it long haul or both? Thank you.
We do not, we do not hold back on capacity growth just because there's competition in the market. That's not what Singapore Airlines has done in the past. It's not what Singapore Airlines will do in the future. So we intend to continue to grow. Of course we will adapt and put the growth to where it is of best used to us. The intensifying competition is coming from all over. It's really global that other airlines are putting back capacity, really recovering to their pre-COVID capacity. So I wouldn't highlight any specific area. It is really across all of our network. Thanks.
Thank you. Lee Lik Hsin, the lady over there please.
I just add that if you look at our load factor it's consistently still very strong. So, and in our press release we did say that we expect the demand to be healthy.
Thank you. Choon Phong. Yes please.
Hi, good morning. Tabitha from DBS here. Could you elaborate further on the drivers behind the steep 9% decline in passenger yields for the main airline? Was it a broad-based reduction in yields or was it more pronounced in any particular customer segment, and should we expect the decline to moderate or accelerate in the coming quarters?
It is a broad-based decline across all of our segments. So it is in economy class as well as in business class. We do expect the yield moderation to continue, but as pointed out in the CEO's presentation, you will see that the yield lines are still quite healthily above the 2019 pre-COVID levels. Thanks.
Thank you, Lik Hsin. Can we get the next question please? Chuanren? Thank you.
Thank you. Chuanren from Air Transport World A question on fleet. I believe you have only one widebody aircraft and during the group in the next six months, and I believe that's the last widebody that you have on order. What are your short-term plans for widebody given that the rest of the other product is delayed until 2026?
Yes, we do have. We're expecting one more A350s coming in and yes there are going to be delays in the 777. As you know Boeing has announced that it's now 2026. But one thing I suppose I should add is that when aircraft delivery they come in at different time of the year. And so some aircraft that come in previously at the later part of the year, they do not contribute the capacity for the full year. So then the following year you'll be full year and therefore that also add to the capacity growth. Second thing is maybe I'll. We didn't quite ask this but maybe I'll just elaborate anyway. Is that the 777, although Boeing have announced that it is going to be 2026 and we usually will have some message from Boeing on the expectations.
The way we have been planning has always been to look at what Boeing tells us and we will actually plan for something that could potentially be worse than that. And then we will then see what are the levers we could pull in order to make up for any capacity shortfalls. So you can be rest assured that we will continue to do that.
Thank you, Choon Phong. Next question please. We've got one online from Kok Xing Hui. She's asking the Boeing 777 delay was announced in October. When will we expect the first delivery and has Boeing not informed us of the delivery timeline for the SIA orders and how will we manage any growth risk from the delay?
Boeing 777. So, individual communication that Boeing or any OEMs with us is obviously confidential. But, like I said earlier, whatever Boeing tells us, we would always as a contingency plan for something that could potentially be worse than that.
Thank you. There's one more question online from Tim Bacchus from Bloomberg. We noticed that the equity accounted associates for the full service carrier are now profitable compared to the previous first half. What are the primary drivers for this? Is Vistara now profitable? Can you comment on Air India's performance for the first half?
So I think I'll touch on the Vistara question. I think Vistara, we are fully accounted for our investment in this. That's the reason, year- on- year you see a difference. But there have been other contributions which are better year- on- year. So putting it together this year we see a better number. As for Air India, I don't think we can comment on at this point and we're still not officially shareholder yet.
Thanks Bala. Next question please. Gentleman over there.
Hi. Morning, Douglas from The Edge. Could I just get a rationale behind the A350 upgrades, and yeah, with the rationale behind it and how do you see this affecting yields? Thank you.
It's as per my presentation earlier. We always look at continuous improvement in our products and we always want to bring what we believe to be the best to our consumers, so to our customers. So that is really part of this. The three brand promises, right? Product is definitely one of them. Service level, we will continue to want to improve it and network. We too want to continue to be able to enhance it.
Thanks. Yes, Yufeng over there please. Could we get the mic to Yufeng?
Morning, Yufeng, from the Straits Times. Just want to ask about the recent announcement by Changi Airport Group to raise charges at the airport. Just wondering how SIA is planning to manage that and whether there are concerns about wider cost implications of airports raising their fees in other countries as well? Thank you.
Thanks for the question. There are two parts to the increase in fees. One is on passenger levy. So that one we will collect on behalf of government and pass it through. That's a pass through cost. Second is of course there is impact on landing parking charges. That is obviously part of our operating cost and that will increase our operating cost. I think the relevant thing to think about is, you know, whether it only affects SIA or it affects the whole industry. And clearly this is something that affects the whole industry. So I guess the question is akin to what happens if fuel price goes up? I mean the whole industry will just adjust.
Thank you, Kai Ping. And we've got one question online from Sharon Chen from Bloomberg. In terms of the investments in the Air India- Vistara merger, do we expect to invest further over the next couple of years?
So when we, I believe when we first talk about Air India investment, which is to put in both merge Vistara into Air India as well as putting in some of money to acquire 25.1% of Air India. Now, as Air India expand and require more capital, there are many ways that an airline could actually get those funding. And there is the external fundraising that would include things like sales and leaseback, finance leases and all those things. So as to how Air India will be funding the expansion, that will be something that we think India is in a better position to respond. So you probably want to direct that to India itself.
Thank you. Goh Choon Phong, any other questions? So maybe the two ladies here.
Thank you. Hi, good morning. I'm Peggy from Beansprout. A question on the route mix. I noticed that your yield is down. How much of that is attributed to the change in the mix of the routes? Because on page 17 of your announcement, East Asia actually went up for revenue contribution, but the rest of the sectors, the rest of the regions are down. My second question relating to that is, I notice some of the points that you have flown to before, like for instance Xiamen, where I go very frequently, you're no longer flying there. So I'm just asking whether some of these points that you have been to and you are now not flying to there or any other places that you've seen. There's some protectionist measures that the country has put in place to just protect their own sector? Thanks.
Obviously the yield declines are different for the different routes. Mathematically it's not the same number, but I would say that the yield decline is also across the board. All of our routes have seen a yield moderation in light of the increasing competition from the additional supply that's been put into the market. I wouldn't point to any one route or region that has suffered more than most. That's the first question. The second question is on Xiamen. We are actually operating through Xiamen. For some time we were having flights in the system only on a rolling two-month basis. We had flights in the system for two months and then we had approvals to add more flights. It was a rolling two-month basis.
But that has since changed and we have now gotten approval to be setting flights for an entire season ahead. So it's more or less back to normal. So that was the situation with Xiamen, but we are operating. Thanks.
Thank you. Lee Lik Hsin to Mayuko please.
Thank you. Good morning, this is Mayuko from Nikkei. I believe from in the final quarter you will expect the financial contribution. Can I know how big the magnitude of the contribution would be? And in a mid- to long-term, what is your expectation coming from that? And if I may add, you talked about the moderation will continue. Yield moderation will continue. Do you expect it to accelerate moderating or do you think it will, the worst is over?
So I'll let Lee Lik Hsin take the yield questions. But on India, we have actually announced that from once we are officially a shareholder in Air India, then we will start to equity account for their results as to how their performance look like and projections. That really is a question that I suggest you pose it to Air India. We are not at liberty to comment on that.
On yield moderation, I think I've already answered that earlier. While we do expect yields to continue to moderate compared to the previous year, I would just point out that we are still healthily above the pre-COVID levels. Thanks.
Goh Choon Phong and Lee Lik Hsin. Any other questions?
Thanks Siva, couple actually. You are big in Southeast Asia. You are going to enter India. What are your long-term plans for China and second question a number of competing airports have started three-runway operations. Are there any urgency from your side for Changi to open up the third runway as soon as possible? Thank you.
We of course want all runways to be operating, but Changi does have its own plan, and again this should be a question that you address to them. On I think you're talking about the Southeast Asia and India expansion in relation to China. So it's not just China, but when we look at our network development we look at what opportunities there are out there and we will continue to pursue if there are growth opportunities. China for example we have announced that we're going to Daxing so that is again a huge and important market for us so rest assured we will continue to pay attention to it. Just because I didn't mention in this latest slide doesn't mean that we think it's not something we will continue to focus on.
I mentioned Southeast Asia and India primarily because there has been development. Recent development is, I think, significant to point out.
Thank you, Choon Phong. Any other questions over here? Please, the front row.
Hi, thanks for the opportunity. I'm Miaomiao from Phillip Securities. I just want to hear your thoughts on Sustainable Aviation Fuel oil given the fuel cost is elevating. Thank you. Sustainable Aviation Fuel oil are the costs given the fuel cost is elevating.
We continue to. If you look at it, in order for the industry to actually achieve net zero by 2050, SAF has to be part of the solution, in fact a major part of the solution. Technology improvement, of course, and I think we are one of the leading carriers when it comes to adopting the latest technology in order to reduce emissions successive generations. If you compare one later generation to the earlier generation of equivalent capability planes, we are talking about maybe about 25% improvement, but SAF has to be part of the solution.
The issue now is still the case whereby we don't have sufficient supply of SAF for the industry in order for us to have a pathway for us to reach Net Zero by 2030 and the industry as a whole have to work together to see how we can encourage producers to continue to invest and produce that and to actually do so in a way that make the pricing viable as well. So that's an ongoing effort.
you, Goh Choon Phong. We've got questions online which we can take first. We've got Perry Yung from UBS who's asking. There's a notable acceleration in the year- on- year increase in non fuel costs in the Q2 of this year versus Q1. What were the drivers behind that?
I'll take that Perry. I think we'll have to go back one year in time. When we were looking at the first half results last financial year, we had indicated that there were some timing differences in the staff cost and M&O and we had suggested that we should look at the half year numbers. But when you fly forward and forecast for this current Q1 and Q2 of this financial year. So that's why in our presentation as well we have focused on the first half numbers and looked at the year- on- year growth on a half yearly basis rather than the quarterly basis.
Thank you Bala. The next question is from Tang Wei Ting from Lianhe Zaobao. She's asking why is the A350 retrofit happening only in 2026? Is it intentional to time it with the 777-9 delivery? And why are we using the same seat designs between two aircraft types?
When we announced that we are going to retrofit the 350 planes with the new products, it actually means that we have been working on it for quite a number of years. I think most of you are aware of the very tedious certification process that industry require for any product that we introduce and something as fundamental as seats, it took even longer time. So it was a decision that was made years back that we want to pursue. We want to retrofit the 350 with the latest and what we believe to be the best product we can offer.
As to why is it the same product if we believe that those are the best business and first class products and they will be industry leading when we introduce it, then of course we want them for all our long haul flights so that all our passengers, regardless of whether they are flying on a 777, later on the 9, that is, or the A350, they will enjoy the same industry leading products. Thank you.
Thank you. The next question is from Brendan Sobie from Sobie Aviation. You are still stuck at six daily flights with Jakarta compared to the historic nine. Do you expect any near term improvement in this lingering regulatory situation particularly with the enhanced Garuda partnership?
Thanks for the questions. This is the area that I said if the part of our enhanced collaboration is to ensure that both parties continue to grow and continue to win from that relationship. So if it leads to an increase in the frequencies of flights between Jakarta and Singapore, you'll get to hear it and hopefully soon. Thanks.
Thank you, Choon Phong. Sorry, we have a question over there.
Sorry, just a follow up to the question on the A350 upgrades, early on, I think I asked, how would that impact yields? How do you foresee the upgrades impacting yields? So that's my first question, and then second one, could I just get some color on SIA halving its London route flights to once daily from February to late March next year. Thank you.
Sorry, which flights again?
London.
Okay. Everything being equal, of course, if you offer a better product, you can expect that demand is stronger and therefore we may have greater pricing capabilities. That's general statement as to when we introduced in 2026. What happened to year? Well, we ceased.
So I believe you are referring to the increase of services to Gatwick, London Gatwick to daily? We launch our Gatwick services with five times a week and they are doing very well and that's why we're increasing the frequencies. Thanks.
And so just to add, that's on top of the four daily flights that we have to Heathrow. So we have a total of five flights to London a day. Maybe the last question to Danny, please.
Thank you very much. So you have a number of codeshares and JV partnerships and you've increased that over the last couple of years. I think the prevailing thought would be that given they span some of your busiest operating routes and countries, how are they performing and how do we think about it? When we read about the yield decline, should we expect stronger yields to hold up more in these particular partnerships?
So the purpose of the partnerships is really to help us extend our reach into areas that we cannot operate feasibly on our own. This would include the partnerships with Lufthansa in Germany, with Air New Zealand. And so the partnerships help us strengthen our market position. And it doesn't necessarily. I mean, yields are a function of demand and supply and that is the environment at the time. Of course, like for like. Apples for apples. We would believe that the partnerships help support better yields because of the greater market reach. But it doesn't mean that the overall market won't decline and therefore overall yields won't decline. So you can't look at that independently. Thanks.
Well, maybe just one last question online, which has just come in from Kimberly Amanda Kao. What is your outlook for the aviation industry over the next year amid the Donald Trump presidency? And are markets worried about inflationary pressures? And that will be the last question.
I have actually presented the growth projections for around the world and really to us, the growth in Southeast Asia and the growth in India, these two places where we now have continued rather to build the strength in will, in my opinion at least, will continue to grow in those expectations. Again, here we are well positioned as an SIA Group is well positioned to be able to tap into those groups. I don't see how India's growth, for example, will be affected in any significant manner. Neither do I see Southeast Asia growth to be affected in any significant manner. We believe we are well positioned and we will continue to strengthen this particular position as well. Thank you.
Thank you. Goh Choon Phong, thank you everyone. We've come to the end of our half-year management analyst briefing. Really appreciate your questions. We will see you again in six months' time. Have a good day and a good week everyone. Thank you.