KUALA LUMPUR (Jan 17): Monthly passenger movements for the Malaysia Airports Holdings Bhd (MAHB) group of airports including Istanbul Sabiha Gokcen International Airport (ISG) in Turkey crossed the five million mark for the first time in December last year.
In the statement, MAHB said they registered a total of 5.35 million passenger movements where Malaysia operations contributed 3.11 million or 58%, and ISG contributed 2.23 million or 42%.
“For Malaysia, the growth was driven mostly by domestic traffic which registered 2.8 million passengers recording a 30% increase from 2.16 million passengers in November, arising from the long year-end festive holidays.
“International passenger movements also registered encouraging growth from November of 114% to 320,371 movements in December,” it said, adding that this increase was mainly attributed to the resumption of umrah travel and the implementation of the Vaccinated Travel Lane (VTL) programme between Malaysia and Singapore.
MAHB Managing Director Datuk Iskandar Mizal Mahmood said the demand generated by the VTL, as evidenced by the sold-out flights showed that such a programme will be the catalyst for air travel recovery.
“We can also see the same demand arising from the resumption of umrah travel since October. Our December 2021 traffic performance is already at 41.6% of pre-Covid-19 levels.
“Our role as the airport operator is to make sure that we facilitate all the additional SOPs and processes required for such travel. We are in constant discussion with the Ministry of Tourism, Arts and Culture, the Ministry of Health, the National Disaster Management Agency and the KLIA Department of Immigration to improve passenger experience,” he said in a statement on Monday (Jan 17).
Meanwhile, in tandem with the growth in passenger movements in Malaysia, MAHB recorded a total of 40,147 aircraft movements in December, a 21% increase from November.
International flights also increased by 15% to 6,582 flights in December from 5,732 flights in the preceding month.
As for ISG, it continues to record consistent total passenger movements of above two million since June 2021 as a result of the country’s high vaccination rate and the lifting of interstate travel restrictions.
Source: The Edge Markets