SEPANG – It has come to our attention that there have been allegations circulating on various chat platforms and forums correlating the presence of multiple COVID-19 variants in this country to the high passenger traffic movements experienced in the month of April 2021.
As such, we wish to clarify that:
1) The total passenger traffic movements reported in various news media for April 2021 is for the Group’s entire network of airports in Malaysia and its fully-owned Istanbul Sabiha Gokcen International Airport (ISG) in Turkey. The Group’s passenger traffic report including the breakdown of the numbers for the preceding month are published and announced on a monthly basis under Company Announcements on Bursa Malaysia Berhad’s website, as well as Malaysia Airports website.
2) The breakdown of the passenger traffic numbers for April 2021 is as per the table below:
As seen from the table, Malaysia passenger traffic movements are about 630,000, of which only about 107,000 are made up of international passenger movements.
3) All airports in Malaysia remain open from the start of the Movement Control Order to facilitate rescue and repatriation, as well as cargo flights in and out of Malaysia. These 107,000 international passenger traffic movements for Malaysia are registered for both arrivals and departures and as such also include among others, movements of foreigners who are returning to their own country, students flying out to their tertiary institutions abroad, permanent residents of Malaysia who are spouses or family members of Malaysian citizens, diplomats, as well as those who have received permission from the Immigration Department of Malaysia to perform official or business travels. Nevertheless, these passengers are put through stringent departure and arrival health and safety screening measures as determined by the Ministry of Health.
4) As a comparison, since the beginning of 2021, international passenger traffic movements were 102,000 for March, 73,000 for February and 96,000 for January.
We hope that the above clarifies and our monthly passenger traffic report can be accessed at https://mahb.listedcompany.com/newsroom.html .