This article first appeared in The Edge Financial Daily on October 11, 2019

KUALA LUMPUR: The number of passengers passing through the 39 airports that Malaysia Airports Holdings Bhd (MAHB) manages nationwide rose 7.6% year-on-year (y-o-y) in September, thanks to higher average load factor for both domestic and international sectors.

MAHB said the impact from haze was minimal.

The airport operator handled 8.35 million passengers in September compared with 7.76 million passengers from a year earlier, according to a filing with Bursa Malaysia yesterday.

International and domestic passenger movements increased by 3.6% and 11.9% respectively in September 2018.

Kuala Lumpur International Airport (KLIA) handled 4.91 million passengers, an increase of 6.1% from 4.63 million passengers recorded a year ago. Of this, KLIA Main Terminal handled 2.34 million passengers, up 7.3% y-o-y, while klia2 handled 5% more passengers to 2.57 million — surpassing KLIA Main Terminal’s passenger traffic for September.

Overall, aircraft movements at Malaysian airports rose 3.7% y-o-y to 74,050 in September, with international and domestic movements registering increases of 0.8% and 5.7% respectively.

Overall average load factor was 72.4%, an increase of 2.1 percentage points over September 2018.