Singapore Airlines has reported an upturn in its first and business class cabins.

The airline’s passenger load factor averaged around 80% in August, spurred by the pick-up in the premium cabins.

Despite this, the airline’s yields remained weak and were still registering double-digit declines from a year earlier.

However, chief executive Chew Choon Seng said yields had stopped worsening.

Speaking at the Greener Skies 2009 conference in Hong Kong, Seng said:

“The trends are moving in the right direction, but we are not out of the woods yet.”

In August, Singapore Airlines carried 16% fewer passengers than it did a year earlier at 1.39 million. Its passenger load factor fell 1.1 percentage points to 78.3%.

SIA is the latest airline to post improving load factors, but these are largely due to the huge capacity cuts airlines have made over the past year. SIA has cut capacity by 11%.

Yesterday, Air New Zealand’s chief executive, Rob Fyfe, speaking at the same conference, predicted Air NZ’s yields would not improve until the end of next year at the earliest.

Fyfe said demand and load factors were on the up, but again that was due to capacity cuts, which it has trimmed by 9%.