KUALA LUMPUR (Oct 3): Malaysia Airports Holdings Bhd (MAHB) saw 11.2 million total passengers movement in August for both its Malaysia and Turkiye airport networks with Malaysia contributing 7.4 million passengers while the remaining 3.8 million from its Turkiye operations.

Local airports in Malaysia also saw the highest average total daily passenger at 240,000 passengers. Meanwhile, it saw 3.5 million and 3.9 million for the international and domestic sector in the same month.

This was partly driven by the six state elections on Aug 12, the extra public holiday declared on Aug 13 post-election, and National Day celebration that coincided with the school holidays, said the group in a statement on Tuesday.

The total passenger in August is the second consecutive month the airport operator group recorded with more than 11 million total passengers.

“Traffic movements are displaying a trend that is similar to pre-pandemic periods where traffic peaks during festive seasons, school holidays and public holidays, indicating that travel trends are gradually normalising.”

It also noted that more airlines have restructured their routes with available active fleets in operations, resulting in more flights to the Northeast Asia region and route resumption to pre-pandemic destinations.

“A myriad of airline activities took place last month such as the commencement of daily Lombok-KLIA and Surabaya-KLIA flights by new airline, Super Air Jet and daily Chennai-KLIA flights by Batik Air Indonesia.”

It said that Batik Air Malaysia has introduced six-times weekly KLIA-Auckland flights, four-times weekly KLIA-Okinawa flights and twice-weekly KLIA-Jeddah flights.

For route resumptions, MAHB said AirAsia resumed the KLIA-Vientiane flights with four weekly frequencies whereas Batik Air Malaysia resumed its daily KLIA-Hong Kong flights.

Penang International Airport was also a beneficiary of newly launched AirAsia flights to Hong Kong thrice-weekly, as well as daily flights to Kuala Namu by Batik Air Indonesia, it added.

Its Turkish operations saw the Istanbul Sabiha Gokcen International Airport’s total passenger movements at 3.8 million passengers in August 2023, a growth of 8.4% from August 2019.

The airport also recorded both international and domestic passenger movements at 1.9 million.

“This sustained traffic growth momentum was contributed by summer holiday travelling, airline route expansions and flight resumption to Northeast Asia destinations.”

“During the month, Turkish low-cost carriers Pegasus and Anadolujet had also introduced new services to Kastomonu, a domestic destination with one weekly frequency each.”

In the morning session, MAHB shares rose two sen or 0.28% to RM7.16, with a market capitalisation of RM11.93 billion.