Singapore Airlines filled 66.1 percent of the space available on its planes for passengers and cargo in February, down from 69.4 percent a year ago, it said on Tuesday.

Airlines worldwide are hoping for a recovery in traffic and load factors, a measure of how efficiently they filled the seats on their flights, but are battling competition from budget carriers and jet fuel prices close to record levels.

Singapore Airlines' overall load factor in February was unchanged from the previous month.

The 57 percent government-owned airline said cargo capacity rose 2.8 percent in February compared with the same period a year earlier, while its cargo load factor was 62.6 percent, down 2.6 percentage points from last year.

Total traffic fell 1.1 percent in February, while capacity rose 3.8 percent.

Passenger capacity was up 4.8 percent from a year earlier. Singapore Airlines said this was a result of flights to new destinations in China and India such as Shanghai, Nanjing, Ahmedabad and Amritsar as well as increased frequency on existing routes to Amsterdam, Mumbai, Kolkata, Perth, Brisbane and Guangzhou.

Singapore Airlines saw 1.19 million passengers in February this year, down 0.6 percent from the same month last year.