CNY boosts passenger traffic in February
KUCHING: Chinese New Year played a crucial factor in boosting February 2019’s passenger traffic for Malaysia Airport Holdings Bhd ( MAHB) airports excluding – Turkey’s Sabiha Gocken International Airport ( ISGA) -by 5.4 per cent year on year (y- o-y) to 8.1 million passengers.
This marked the first time for the month of February to breach the eight million passenger traffic mark. For ISGA, international passenger traffic grew by 19.5 per cent y- o-y for the same month, the largest year- on-year growth in 13 months while domestic passengers declined by 2.7 per cent y- o-y.
This brings ISGA’s overall passenger growth in February 2019 to 4.4 per cent y- o-y after hitting 2.5 million passengers, said MIDF Amanah Investment Bank Bhd ( MIDF Research) in a sector outlook yesterday.
“As such, MAHB’s total passenger traffic including ISG) grew by 5.1 per cent y- o-y in February 2019, marking its ninth consecutive month of year- onyear (y- o-y) growth.
“Domestic traffic continues its upward trend. Domestic traffic for Malaysia in February 2019 increased by 8.9 per cent y- o-y to 3.9 million passengers, extending the y- o-y growth to its fourth straight month,” it observed.
“This is in contrast to the 0.8 per cent y- o-y drop seen in February 2018. The bulk of the growth was attributable to the jump in domestic traffic at airports exKLIA.”
This was attributed to the Chinese New Year celebrations combined with the school holidays.
Meanwhi le, Internat ional passenger traffic in Malaysia jumped by 2.3 per cent y- o-y to reach 4.2 million passengers. It was also notable that the ratio of international to domestic passengers stood at 51:49 which bodes well for MAHB as the passenger service charge for international passengers is higher compared to domestic passengers.
“Likewise, the growth for international passengers can be linked to the CNY celebrations which coincided with a spike in the daily number of passengers of nearly 170,000 on 10 February 2018, the last day of the CNY holiday week,” MIDF Research added.
While travelling sentiment may be affected in the short term due to the tragedy faced by Ethiopian Airlines, the research firm opined that AirAsia Group Bhd (AirAsia) will continue supporting the growth in KLIA with the latest contribution at 54 per cent.
“AirAsia also does not operate any Boeing Max 8 aircraft and the same is applicable to Malindo Air and Cathay Pacific which are major contributors to KLIA main terminal passenger traffic.
“As such, we reiterate our optimism that MAHB passenger traffic can surpass the 100 million mark in 2019, while maintaining a relatively conservative growth rate of 3.5 per cent.”
On its international outlook, MIDF Research saw that Turkey entered into a recession as its GDP contracted sharper than expected with seasonally adjusted 2.4 per cent y- o-y drop in the last quarter of 2018.
“Despite an assert ion of downward pressure on the Turkish lira, we believe that a weaker lira could attract more international passengers into Turkey, especially via ISGA,” it added.
“This will continue to uphold the robust growth in the ISG’s international sector which has been recording double- digit y- o-y growth in the past five months.”