Air passenger traffic expected to recover up to 34% in 2022
Passenger traffic and flight movements of the Macau International Airport (MIA) are projected to recover to about 30% and 34% of pre-pandemic levels in 2019, respectively.
In a media luncheon held yesterday, the Macau International Airport Co. Ltd. (CAM) announced that it expects that, while there will be a boost in passenger arrivals through air traffic, cargo volume is expected to grow by about 20% compared to that of 2019.
Last year, due to travel restrictions and quarantine requirements associated with Covid-19, the civil aviation market mainly resumed routes to the mainland after a long period of suspension.
About 10 routes were re-launched, including routes to Shanghai, Beijing, Hangzhou, Chengdu, Ningbo, Tianjin, Chongqing, Wenzhou, Nanning and Nanjing. Passenger traffic volumes for East China routes have been relatively stable and accounted for about 80% of traffic volume in 2021.
The Shanghai route increased to an average of 12 round-trip flights per day in July 2021.
“In this protracted battle against the Covid-19, MIA has never stopped its pace [in the acceleration of] the airport’s development and carried out 75 optimization projects on airport facilities, equipment and information technology,” remarked CAM’s chairman of the Board of Directors, Ma Iao Hang.
It is predicted that the global demand for air travel will reach 61% of pre-pandemic levels, while capacity is expected to continually increase faster than demand, reaching 67% of pre-pandemic levels for 2022.
Last year, the Macau airport received 1.14 million passengers with a year-on-year decrease of 2.2%, while 15,791 aircraft movements were handled, representing a yearly decline of 6.9%.
Benefiting from the growth of global e-commerce, the demand for air cargo rose significantly as MIA attained cargo volumes of 48,595 tonnes with a year-on-year increase of 45.72%, an increase of 15% compared to pre-pandemic levels in 2019.
As the “Renovation for MIA Terminal 2 and Heliport Project” design work has been completed and approved by government authorities in 2021, CAM pledged that it would continue to work closely with related departments and launch the subsequent tendering and construction work in due course.
Upon completion, the annual capacity of Terminal 2 will reach 2 million passengers, in connection with Pac On Ferry Terminal to build a sea-land-air integrated transportation hub in the GBA.
