This article first appeared in The Edge Financial Daily, on May 11, 2016.

KUALA LUMPUR: Local airports recorded 6.95 million passengers in April, up 2.2% compared with 6.8 million passengers in the same month last year, said Malaysia Airports Holdings Bhd (MAHB).

International passengers grew 4.4% to 3.4 million from 3.3 million, while domestic passengers rose 0.1% to 3.55 million from 3.54 million, MAHB said in a filing with Bursa Malaysia yesterday.

The passenger traffic at the Kuala Lumpur International Airport (KLIA) during the month dropped 0.4% to 1.96 million in April compared with 1.97 million in April 2015, while klia2 saw an increase of 7.5% in passengers to 2.16 million from 2.01 million.

Overall aircraft movements fell 4.8% during the month, with international and domestic aircraft movements declining 3.6% and 5.5% respectively.

MAHB said its Istanbul Sabiha Gokcen International Airport in Turkey saw a 10% increase in passengers in April to 2.38 million compared with 2.16 million in April 2015.

Meanwhile, for the first four months of this year, MAHB’s Malaysian airports saw a 3.3% increase in passengers to 28.12 million compared with 27.21 million in the previous corresponding period.

International passengers grew 5.8% to 13.84 million from 13.09 million, while domestic passengers grew 1% to 14.27 million from 14.13 million.

For Istanbul Sabiha Gokcen, the January-April period saw a 19.8% increase in passengers to 29.6 million from 24.71 million previously, underpinned by a 21.6% increase in domestic passengers to 6.16 million from 5.07 million.

MAHB said despite the reduction in aircraft movements in April, its Malaysian airports managed to record a positive 2.2% growth.

The company said the growth in international passenger traffic was contributed by a significant improvement in the Northeast Asia and Middle East sectors, as well as at secondary airports.

“Qatar Airways, China Airlines, Iraqi Airways, Xiamen Airlines, Turkish Airlines, China Southern Airlines, Shanghai Airlines, Mahan Air and Oman Air are some of the airlines which grew above 30% over April 2015,” it said.

“Airports such as Penang, Kota Kinabalu, Langkawi and Ipoh recorded very high year-on-year increases of over 15% and as high as over 100% in the case of Ipoh airport,” it added.

MAHB said Kota Kinabalu International Airport continued to record double-digit growth of 26.3% in passengers in the first four months of the year.

“This is a remarkable improvement from the two terminals operations before, whereby up to November 2014 year-to-date growth was less than 1.1% for each of the terminals,” it added.