KUALA LUMPUR (Feb 10): Airports in Malaysia registered 6.85 million passengers in January, an increase of 3.2% compared to the 6.64 million passengers recorded a year ago, said Malaysia Airports Holdings Bhd (MAHB).

In a statement today, the airports operator said the growth was contributed by pre-Chinese New Year traffic, as well as the additional traffic carried by new airlines that started operations in 2015.

“The international and domestic sector recorded 3.5 million and 3.3 million passengers, an increase of 6% and 0.3%, respectively,” MAHB said.

It added that the growth was higher than expected, despite cuts from Malaysia Airlines, as the airline’s withdrawn capacity was filled by both local and foreign carriers.

“There was significant growth in AirAsia’s and Malindo’s traffic by above 10% and 35% respectively,” the group said.

KLIA passenger movements, meanwhile, increased by 4.4% in January. Although the KLIA Main Terminal traffic decreased by 13%, this was offset by KLIA2 that grew by 21.4%.

“The last 12 months' passenger traffic for KLIA Main Terminal recorded 22.4 million passengers, a decline of 9.2%, while klia2 recorded 26.7 million, an increase of 11.2% over the same corresponding period,” MAHB noted.

Overall, passenger movements at MAHB airports, including Istanbul Sabiha Gokcen International Airport, grew by 6.8% to register a total of 9.1 million passengers in Jan 2016, compared to 8.5 million passengers a year ago.

International traffic recorded 4.3 million passengers, a year-on-year increase of 7.7%; while domestic traffic recorded 4.8 million passengers, a 6% increase compared to the same period in 2015.

“On a last-twelve-month basis, the total MAHB system, including Istanbul SGIA, registered a 3.5% growth, with 111.7 million passengers,” it added.