This article first appeared in The Edge Financial Daily on March 12, 2019

KUALA LUMPUR: Passenger traffic at the 39 airports in the country operated by Malaysia Airports Holdings Bhd (MAHB) rose by 5.4% in February to 8.14 million from 7.72 million in the same month last year.

In a filing with Bursa Malaysia yesterday, MAHB said international traffic climbed 2.3% year-on-year (y-o-y) to 4.2 million passengers, while domestic traffic rose 8.9% y-o-y to four million passengers.

The Chinese New Year that coincided with a one-week school holidays was cited as the main reason for the boost in numbers, it said.

“The first 11 days of February 2019 registered an average double-digit growth of 18.1%. Domestic passenger movements for that same period recorded a 27.4% growth over the same period last year,” MAHB said.

The airport operator said the volume of domestic passenger movements in February was higher than January despite the lesser number of days in February.

“Europe, Northeast Asia, Southeast Asia, and the Southwest Pacific sectors registered positive growth in passenger movements. Eleven airports and 13 airlines registered double-digit growth for international passenger movements traffic in February,” it added.

Passenger traffic at the Kuala Lumpur International Airport’s (KLIA) main terminal rose 3.3% y-o-y to 2.22 million in February from 2.15 million. For klia2, it grew by 2.7% to 2.59 million from 2.52 million.

The last trailing 12-month passenger movements for KLIA’s main terminal recorded 28.2 million passengers while klia2 recorded 32 million passengers.

Meanwhile, the Sabiha Gökçen International Airport in Istanbul, Turkey posted a 4.4% growth in passengers to 2.49 million, up from 2.38 million in February last year.

This was mainly led by its international passenger movements which increased by 19.5%, but partly offset by the domestic passenger movements which declined by 2.7%.

System-wide, including its Istanbul operations in Turkey, MAHB saw a 5.1% increase in passenger traffic to 10.62 million in February, from 10.1 million last year.

The month also saw overall aircraft movements across the MAHB system increase by 1%, with international and domestic aircraft movements recording an increase of 1.6% and 0.6% respectively.