Macau International Airport (MIA) has scheduled more flights to and from mainland China to accommodate passengers traveling during the upcoming Chinese New Year holiday.
Yesterday, the MIA issued a statement announcing an old route was being restarted. From February 2, prior to Chinese New Year, MIA plans to resume the route between Hefei and Macau.
This means that Hefei Xinqiao International Airport, the airport of the capital city of Anhui province, will receive its first regional flight since the start of the pandemic.
The Hefei-Macau route was suspended last February due to Covid-19. After resuming, the route will now operate every Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday via Air Macau.
Currently, a round trip between Hefei and Macau costs 1,350 patacas, tax included, with a one-way trip costing 700 patacas.
Air Macau has also launched a new Yiwu-Macau route which is set to begin operations on January 19, with a total of three flights per week.
Currently, Air Macau is running daily flights to Beijing, Shanghai, Hangzhou, Najing, Chengdu, Xiamen and Ningbo. These flights are scheduled to remain at their current frequency for all of February.
In addition to these routes, the local airline carrier also plans to operate flights to 10 other mainland cities, including Nanning, Guiyang, Qingdao, Tianjin, Taiyuan, Wenzhou, Zhengzhou, Chongqing, Jieyangchaoshan, and Changzhou.
In December, Air Macau’s route plan and revenue management department said that in the fourth quarter of 2020, the outlook for the recovery of passenger numbers from mainland China was optimistic overall.
During the last Chinese New Year holiday, specifically between January 18 and February 6, the MIA predicted they would welcome 716,000 arriving and departing passengers, with daily average passenger numbers of 35,000, representing an increase of 5.9% compared to the same period in 2019. A total of 102 flights were scheduled to be added as well.
However, due to the outbreak of Covid-19, the airport recorded smaller passenger arrivals during the Chinese New Year holiday (January 24 to January 28, 2020), and the number dropped by 25% year on year, compared to the 2019 holiday period.
This year, the Lunar New Year holiday period will be between February 12 and 18.
The Times contacted the Macau International Airport Co. Ltd to enquire about flight arrangements and passenger number forecasts for 2021, however no reply was received by press time.
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