Passenger movement also increases by 7.1%, registering 1.7m last month

by NURUL SUHAIDI / Pic by TMR FILE

MALAYSIA Airports Holdings Bhd (MAHB) announced that 55 out of 89, or 62%, foreign airlines have resumed operations at all five international airports in Malaysia.

The fives are including Kuala Lumpur International Airport (KLIA), Langkawi International Airport, Penang International Airport (PEN), Kota Kinabalu International Airport (BKI) and Kuching International Airport.

Among the airlines that introduced new international destinations last month included Batik Air Malaysia which commenced Phuket from KLIA with seven flights weekly.

In comparison to the previous month, Malaysia Airports Group (MAG) noted that passenger movement increased by 7.1%, registering 1.7 million in August 2022.

It said the growth is due to the introduction of new routes as it commemorated two new direct services — KLIA to Haneda with two flights weekly and BKI to Singapore with three flights on weekly basis.

This is also because Firefly has resumed its Phuket service from PEN with four flights weekly.

Other reasons that contributed to the surge were Saudi Arabia’s relaxation of visa rules, which led to an increase in umrah flights and the relaxation of travel entry requirements for foreign travellers into Malaysia.

Similarly, due to the summer holiday period, international passenger movements for the MAG’s Turkiye operations had also climbed by 4.9% to 1.5 million.

It noted that the Istanbul Sabiha Gokcen International Airport (ISG) saw domestic passenger movements of 1.6 million travellers and 3.1 million passengers in 2019, which are respectively 65.7% and 79.1% of pre-pandemic levels.

All of these contributed to the group’s recovery with a total passenger movement currently stand at 7.9 million the highest so far, with 4.8 million being from Malaysia operation while the remaining is from ISG.