This article first appeared in The Edge Financial Daily on March 13, 2018

KUALA LUMPUR: The number of passengers passing through the 39 airports that Malaysia Airports Holdings Bhd (MAHB) manages in the country rose by 4.7% to 7.69 million in February 2018 from 7.34 million a year ago — the highest recorded for the month of February.

“The overall Malaysia passenger traffic growth of 4.7% for February 2018 was mainly driven by the international sector,” said MAHB in a filing with Bursa Malaysia yesterday.

The airport operator said international traffic recorded 4.1 million passengers with a year-on-year (y-o-y) increase of 10.8%.

“The international passenger volume for February 2018, despite being only 28 days, is also higher than January 2017, which was the Chinese New Year month.

“It was expected that the Chinese New Year holidays would drive domestic traffic as well but there was a reduction in domestic airlines’ seat capacity offered during the season. This was partly caused by the continued rationalisation and retirement of fleets by some of the domestic airlines,” it added.

However, domestic traffic recorded a decline of 1.3% y-o-y to 3.6 million passengers in February 2018.

The Kuala Lumpur International Airport (KLIA) in Sepang handled 3.42 million passengers in February 2018, a growth of 8.2% from 3.16 million passengers recorded a year ago. Out of this, passenger traffic at KLIA Main Terminal fell 1% y-o-y to 2.15 million from 2.17 million, which was offset by a 12.1% increase in traffic at klia2 to 2.52 million from 2.25 million.

Overall aircraft movements slipped 1.8% y-o-y in February 2018, with international movements registering an increase of 13.7%, which was offset by a 5.3% decline in domestic movements.

“Overall average load factor was 76% in February 2018,” said MAHB.

System-wide including its Istanbul operations in Turkey, MAHB handled 7.1% more passengers to 10.07 million in February 2018 compared with 9.4 million in February 2017.

Istanbul Sabiha Gokcen International Airport’s (SGIA) passenger traffic grew 15.5% y-o-y in February 2018 to 2.38 million from 2.06 million.

MAHB attributed this growth to Pegasus, Anadolujet, Turkish Airlines and Qatar Airways, which made up 96% of the total Istanbul SGIA passenger traffic.

MAHB shares closed one sen or 0.11% lower at RM8.78 yesterday, bringing a market capitalisation of RM14.7 billion.