KUALA LUMPUR (March 11): Passenger traffic at the country’s 39 airports managed by Malaysia Airports Holdings Bhd (MAHB) grew 5.4% in February to 8.14 million from 7.72 million a year ago.

International traffic climbed 2.3% year-on-year (y-o-y) to 4.2 million passengers, while domestic traffic climbed 8.9% y-o-y to four million passengers.

The Chinese New Year festive season that coincided with one-week school holidays were cited as reasons for the boost in numbers.

“The first 11 days of February 2019 registered an average double-digit growth of 18.1%. Domestic passenger movements for that same period recorded 27.4% growth over the same period last year,” MAHB said in a filing with Bursa Malaysia.

MAHB noted that the volume of domestic passenger movements was higher than in January despite having fewer days in the month of  February.

“Europe, North East Asia, South East Asia and the South West Pacific sectors registered positive growth in passenger movements. Eleven airports and 13 airlines registered double-digit growth for international passenger movements traffic in February 2019,” it added.

Passenger traffic at the Kuala Lumpur International Airport (KLIA) Main Terminal went up by 3.3% y-o-y to 2.22 million in February from 2.15 million, while passenger traffic at klia2 also grew by 2.7% to 2.59 million from 2.52 million. The last trailing 12-month passenger movements for KLIA Main recorded 28.2 million passengers while klia2 recorded 32 million passengers.

Meanwhile, the Sabiha Gökçen International Airport in Istanbul, Turkey (Istanbul SGIA) posted a 4.4% growth in passengers to 2.49 million, up from 2.38 million in February last year. This was mainly led by its international passenger movements with increased by 19.5%, but partly offset by domestic passenger movements which declined by 2.7%.

Systemwide including its Istanbul operations in Turkey, MAHB saw a 5.1% increase in passenger traffic to 10.62 million in February, from 10.1 million last year.

The month also saw overall aircraft movements across the MAHB system increase by 1%, with international and domestic aircraft movements recording an increase of 1.6% and 0.6% respectively.