KUALA LUMPUR: Malaysia Airports Holdings Bhd’s (MAHB) network of airports nationwide has witnessed a 52% increase in international traffic in March compared with the preceding month.

       The increase recorded by the 420,000 international passenger movements was due to the implementation of various vaccinated travel lane programmes between Kuala Lumpur and Singapore, Bangkok, Phuket and Phnom Penh as well as between Penang and Singapore, according to a Bernama report.

       The Kuala Lumpur International Airport also welcomed a new international airline – Air India Express – on March 28 that serves a three-time weekly flight from Tiruchirappalli International Airport in Tamil Nadu, India.

       It is the only foreign carrier with a scheduled service between Tiruchirappalli and Kuala Lumpur, said MAHB in a statement.

       Meanwhile, partner airlines also continued to resume more international routes such as Malaysia Airlines and Malindo Air flying to Perth following the reopening of the Australian borders on March 3.

       Malaysia Airliens resumed flights to five cities in India in March, operating to New Delhi, Bangalore, Mumbai, Chennai and Hyderabad.

       “We continue to be encouraged by the gradual increase in international passenger movements at our local airports with the reopening of borders on April 1,” said MAHB managing director Datuk Iskandar Mizal Mahmood.

       “Since then, we have been recording a daily average of 20,000 international movements. We are expecting a further increase to this number once the Kota Kinabalu International Airport (BKI) begins to receive international passengers this month.”

       Prior to the pandemic, he noted that BKI was its third busiest airport for international traffic with an average of 8,460 international passenger movements per day.

       Last month, the group recorded a total of 5.31 million passenger movements with its local airports in Malaysia serving the majority of 57% or 3.03 million passengers.

       Its Turkish asset Istanbul Sabiha Gokcen International Airport served a total of 2.29 million passengers with 1.15 million international and 1.14 million domestic passengers respectively.