21 April 2022
Malaysia Airports Holdings Bhd’s (MAHB) network of airports nationwide posted a 52 per cent increase in international traffic in March compared to February.
The airport operator said this was driven by the implementation of various Vaccinated Travel Lane (VTL) programmes.
“The increase recorded by the 420,000 international passenger movements was due to the implementation of various VTL programmes between Kuala Lumpur and Singapore, Bangkok, Phuket and Phnom Penh as well as between Penang and Singapore,” MAHB said today.
Managing director Datuk Iskandar Mizal Mahmood said MAHB was encouraged by the gradual increase in international passenger traffic at its local airports with the reopening of the borders on April 1.
Iskandar said the group had been recording a daily average of 20,000 international movements since the reopening of borders.
“We are expecting a further increase to this number once Kota Kinabalu International Airport (BKI) begins to receive international passengers this month. Prior to the pandemic, BKI was our third busiest airport for international traffic with an average of 8,460 international passenger movements per day,” he said.
MAHB said on March 28, Kuala Lumpur International Airport welcomed a new international airline, Air India Express, which flies three times a week from Tiruchirappalli International Airport in Tamil Nadu, India.
“It is the only foreign carrier with a scheduled service between Tiruchirappalli and Kuala Lumpur,” it said.
MAHB said its partner airlines had also resumed other international routes, such as Malaysia Airlines and Malindo Air, flying to Perth after Australia’s borders reopened on March 3.
Malaysia Airlines also resumed flights to five cities in India namely New Delhi, Bangalore, Mumbai, Chennai and Hyderabad in March.
Last month, MAHB recorded a total of 5.31 million passenger movements with its local airports in Malaysia serving the majority of 57 per cent or 3.03 million passengers.
Its Turkish asset, Istanbul Sabiha Gokcen International Airport, served a total of 2.29 million passengers with 1.15 million international and 1.14 million domestic passengers respectively.
For Malaysia, the overall passenger movements increased 19 per cent in March from February.
Its domestic passenger traffic movements rose 15 per cent at 2.61 million passengers from the previous month.
Source: www.nst.com.my
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