KUALA LUMPUR: Malaysia Airports Holdings Bhd (MAHB) registered 8.3 million total passenger movements in February, of which 3.9 million were international passengers while 4.4 million were domestic.

The airport operator said total passenger movements at MAHB’s network of airports continued to be buoyant and recorded higher daily average passengers of 1,400 last month despite it being a shorter month compared to January.

“This was driven by the school holidays in Malaysia and also the increased flight frequencies by airlines in Türkiye,” it said in a statement today.

In Malaysia, it said total passenger movements recorded by local airports for February were encouraging, registering 5.8 million passengers and with a much higher average daily passenger movements of 3,480 passengers compared to January.

“The increase of 4 per cent over the preceding month for international average daily passenger movements was mainly contributed by the growth of passengers for the South Korea, China, and Japan sectors,” it added.

Furthermore, MAHB said although the China sector was still in the early phase of recovery, passenger movements for the sector grew by 61 per cent in February over January.

“Domestic passenger movements were equally positive due to the school holidays, with more than 112,000 average daily passengers, about the same average daily passenger levels seen in January,” it said.

Meanwhile, its Istanbul Sabiha Gokcen International Airport in Türkiye recorded total passenger movements of 2.5 million in February 2023, in which international and domestic passenger movements registered 1.3 million and 1.2 million passengers, respectively.

“There was a slight slowdown in the overall daily traffic in the first five to six days after an earthquake struck southern and central Türkiye,” it explained.

Nevertheless, it said “passenger movements picked up and reached 92.9 per cent recovery against the average daily passengers prior to the earthquake for the remaining days of last month.” – Bernama