KUALA LUMPUR (March 10): The Lunar New Year (a.k.a. Chinese New Year/CNY) holiday season spurred the travelling urge as Malaysia Airports Holdings Bhd (MAHB) said passenger traffic in its local airports grew by 6.9% year-on-year in February to 6.92 million, with an exceptionally strong increase from Kuala Lumpur International Airport (KLIA).
“Malaysian airports’ growth of 6.9% was higher than expected, which was contributed by Chinese New Year traffic and the additional day in the leap year.
“Malindo Air continued to record a high double-digit growth of more than 35%, while AirAsia as a group grew by more than 15%,” the airport operator said in a filing with Bursa Malaysia.
MAHB said KLIA’s traffic jumped by 7.8% to 4.05 million in the month. But the declining trend from the flagship terminal continued in the month, so the new terminal klia2, picked up the slack as it grew by 25.5% to 2.38 million passengers — with more than two-thirds being travellers for international flights.
“In addition to Malaysia Airlines frequency cuts, KLIA Main (terminal)’s growth was affected by the absence of Jetstar Asia, as well as the high growth of Malindo/Lion Air, [all of] which have moved to klia2,” said MAHB.
It added that overall aircraft movements at KLIA in February increased by 1% over the same month last year. International and domestic aircraft movements at KLIA registered an increase of 0.7% and 1.6% respectively.
MAHB’s Istanbul Sabiha Gokcen International Airport (ISGA) in Turkey continued its double-digit traffic growth in February, the airport operator said, increasing 24.5% year-on-year to 2.18 million. The growth came despite some cancellations and flight delays from severe weather conditions, said MAHB.
“The international and domestic sectors grew by 13.5% and 30.2% respectively. Overall, aircraft movements increased by 29.9%,” it added.
Putting January’s number into the equation, MAHB’s Malaysian airports’ total traffic has grown by 6.2% so far this year to 8.23 million. With the ISGA’s numbers, the year-to-date traffic growth for all airports in MAHB’s stable increased 9% to 18.26 million.