According to the Malaysian Aviation Commission (MavCom), passenger air traffic is set to increase at a rate of 5 or 6 percent at Malaysian airports in 2020. The increase will take total passengers handled by Malaysia in its airports to somewhere between 114.9 million and 116.0 million.
In a report recently released by the Malaysian Aviation Commission, it said the growth in airport passenger traffic will be driven by the ‘Visit Malaysia 2020’ campaign and a 3.2 percent increase in domestic seat capacity.
The commission also reveals that overall seat capacity is expected to grow 2.0 percent year-on-year in 2020 compared to 4.3 percent in 2019.
In the report, the commission said, “The forecasted growth in 2020 follows MavCom’s revised 2019 passenger traffic forecast to between 109.1 million and 109.7 million, being growth of between 6.4 percent and 7 percent year-on-year, while actual traffic growth for the first half of 2019 was 5.2 percent year-on-year.”
In the first half of this year, Malaysia recorded 4.8 million tourist arrivals by air, which is an 8.8 percent increase year-on-year. This increase is mainly a result of higher tourist arrivals from Indonesia, China, and Thailand, which offset the decline in tourist arrivals from Singapore and Brunei. Collectively, these five countries constituted 78 percent of the total tourist arrivals in the first half of 2019.
However, despite the increase in tourist arrivals, Malaysian carriers recorded lower operating margins during the same period.
Recently, the Malaysian Aviation Commission explained that Scanda Sky was not an airline licensed under the Malaysian Aviation Commission Act 2015 [Act 771] and advised travellers not to be deceived by offers from the Malaysian carrier.
Malaysia Airport Holdings network of airports registered a 6 percent growth in passenger traffic in November with 11.5 million passenger movements compared to 10.84 million in the same month last year.