KUALA LUMPUR (Nov 10): Malaysia Airports Holdings Bhd (MAHB) has managed to stem a two-month decline in passenger numbers, with traffic growing by a marginal 0.1% to 6.832 million in October this year from 6.828 million a year ago.

The number of passengers passing through the 39 airports it manages in the country declined by 1.8% and 5% in September and August 2014 respectively from the year-ago period.

In a filing with Bursa Malaysia today, the airport operator said the number of international passengers grew by 0.7% to 3.256 million in October, but domestic passengers fell by 0.5% to 3.576 million.

"North Asia, the Middle East and Europe sectors recorded a decline in traffic against last year. There was also a drop of 3 percentage points in the average load factor for both the international and domestic sectors compared with October 2013," it said.

For the main terminal at the KL International Airport (KLIA) in Sepang, October passenger traffic fell 8% to 1.964 million from 2.134 million a year ago, on lower number of international and domestic passengers.

MAHB said the negative trend was partly due to the shift of capacity and operation of direct flights from secondary airports bypassing KLIA.

Traffic at klia2, meanwhile, rose by 3.1% to 1.999 million from 1.938 million in October 2013, thanks to a 12.1% growth in international passengers handled.

For the 10 months period, MAHB handled 6.1% more passengers to 68.053 million from 64.163 million a year ago. International and domestic traffic at the 39 airports registered a growth of 5.8% and 6.3% respectively.

"Though there are some positive signs in the traffic performance, the full-year growth prospect remains softer than actual traffic growth to date," said MAHB.

"While the negative impact from MH370 and MH17 on China and Europe traffic continues there are some positive developments in other sectors. The immediate recovery in the domestic sector may not be likely," it added.

MAHB also said in contrast to October’s 3.2% increase in seat capacity, the seat capacity offered by airlines for the November and December remain optimistic in the range of 6.7% average, with international at 7.1% and domestic 6.3%.

"It does provide some optimism for the next two months traffic performance.

"MAHB is cautiously optimistic that full-year traffic numbers would remain close to the original budgeted numbers," it said. It is targeting to handle 83 million passengers this year, up 4% from 79.6 million passengers in 2013.