KUALA LUMPUR — National airports company Malaysia Airports Group continues its steady recovery in air travel for its third quarterly report (3Q23) with the introduction of three new airlines and various new routes under its airport network.
In this quarter, the group’s local operations welcomed Salam Air, Super Air Jet and Sichuan Airlines at Kuala Lumpur International Airport (KUL) while existing partner airlines added 12 new destinations and resumed seven routes on top of their current services.
“The increase in flight offerings contributed to the total number of local passenger movements last quarter at 21.7 million, reaching more than 80% recovery of the total quarterly traffic, for the first time, over the same period in September 2019.
“New routes introduced were KUL-Muscat by Salam Air, KUL-Lombok, KUL-Pekanbaru and KUL-Surabaya by Super Air Jet, and KUL-Haikou by Sichuan Airlines.
“New destinations offered by existing airlines from KUL are Auckland, Jeddah and Okinawa by Batik Air Malaysia, Chengdu by AirAsia X, Air China and Batik Air Malaysia, and Shanghai Pudong by China Eastern.
“New services from Penang International Airport (PEN) are Kuala Namu by Batik Air Indonesia, Guilin by Batik Air Malaysia, Hong Kong by AirAsia, and Xiamen by Xiamen Airlines.
“New services from Langkawi International Airport (LGK) are Chengdu by Batik Air Malaysia and from Kota Kinabalu International Airport (BKI) is Beijing Daxing by AirAsia.
“As for the resumption of destinations, Batik Air Malaysia resumed services to Hong Kong, Zhengzhou, Adelaide and Chennai from KUL whereas AirAsia X resumed its KUL-Raja Sansi route.
“At BKI, Shanghai Airlines resumed its service from Shanghai, and Loong Air from Xi’an,” Malaysia Airports listed in its statement, today.
The group registered 6.9 million total passenger movements for airports in Malaysia which accounted for 67% of the entire group’s performance at 10.3 million in September.
“Despite the typhoon affecting some parts of China, Hong Kong, Macau, Philippines, Taiwan and Japan in September, the group’s local airports registered 3.3 million total international passengers, reaching 79.3%, the highest traffic recovery for monthly traffic over 2019 levels.
“The domestic sector registered 3.6 million passenger movements, reaching 86.7% of 2019 levels. On the whole, performance for Malaysia in September reached 83.0% of September 2019 levels,” it said.
Meanwhile, the group’s airport in Turkey, Istanbul Sabiha Gokcen International Airport (SAW) recorded 3.4 million total passenger movements in September 2023.
“This was encouraging as the airport continued to sustain above the 3 million mark at the tail end of the summer travel season. International and domestic passenger movements at SAW last month registered 1.8 million and 1.7 million passengers respectively, contributing to a mix of 52:48 international to domestic passengers.
“On a quarterly basis, SAW reached 10.9 million passenger movements with international and domestic sectors registering 5.6 million and 5.3 million passengers respectively.
“This performance represents 133.5% and 89.8% of 2019 levels for the international and domestic passenger movements respectively,” it added. – October 20, 2023