KUALA LUMPUR, Feb 17 — Malaysia Airports Holdings Bhd’s (MAHB) network of airports recorded 4.8 million passenger movements in January 2022, better than the fourth quarter of 2021, despite the additional challenges from the unfolding Omicron coronavirus wave.
The airport operator said passenger movements contribution from both Malaysia and the Istanbul Sabiha Gokcen International Airport (SGIA) were more than two million each.
“High vaccination rates and the ramp-up for booster shot campaigns have significantly reduced serious illness and hospitalisations, providing optimism for more progressive relaxation of travel restrictions and procedures,” it told the stock exchange.
Malaysia’s international and domestic passenger movements recorded 1.3 million and 3.5 million passengers respectively, driven by the country’s domestic traffic recovery following the easing of interstate travel restrictions since October 2021.
MAHB said Malaysia recorded 2.7 million passenger movements overall, with international and domestic sectors recording over 270,000 and 2.5 million passengers, respectively.
It noted that domestic passenger movements reached 63.0 per cent of January 2019 traffic, the highest growth achieved to date compared to pre-COVID19 levels.
“Despite the unfolding of Omicron wave resulting in the temporary suspension of the Vaccinated Travel Lane and Umrah trips in Malaysia, January passenger movements for Malaysia were resilient and performed better than the average passenger movements recorded in the fourth quarter of 2021,” said MAHB.
The airport operator said Istanbul SGIA’s daily passenger movements recorded an increasing trend towards the last week of January.
Istanbul SGIA handled a total of two million passenger movements in January 2022, with international passengers exceeding January 2019 movements for the first time by 8.5 per cent, or 84,094 passengers.
“The traffic recovery momentum from 2021 continued to 2022 as Istanbul SGIA was ranked as the sixth busiest airport in terms of total passenger traffic by ACI (Airport Council International) Europe in 2021,” it said. “Some of the countries within Southeast Asia and Asia-Pacific are planning to gradually open borders with ongoing talks to establish new travel bubbles. The latest news from National Recovery Council on relaxing Malaysia’s borders as early as March brought optimism to the aviation industry.”
