Passenger traffic to grow 9% - MAVCOM

The report notes that passenger traffic for Malaysia is forecasted to grow year-on-year between 7.8 percent and 8.8 percent in 2017.

This is the third consecutive year that passenger traffic is growing, after 2015 recorded a positive growth of 0.8 percent and 2016 saw a 5.6 percent growth.

Passenger count is forecasted to hit up to 99.2 million in 2017, after recording actual passenger count of 91.2 million people in 2016 and 86.3 million in 2015.

The report shows that Malaysia is third most connected country in ASEAN, behind Singapore and Thailand respectively.

Other ASEAN countries fall far behind compared to the top three nations.

In line with this, industry watchers are concerned with the increasing fleet count by airlines in the country.

MAVCOM report confirms that the fleet size of Malaysian airline carriers are expected to grow in 2017, compared to previous years, after recording sharp declines in the past two years.

An increased fleet size could signal financial strain on aircraft carriers in managing rising operational and transactional costs of these airlines, but would signal a readiness of these carriers to manage an anticipated increased passenger traffic from the civil aviation sector.

But the report presented by MAVCOM does show that at industry level, Malaysian carriers are reporting a negative spread in the past two years from 2015 to 2016. The report does not show a forecasted spread for 2017.

MAVCOM also took the opportunity to clarify to the public the various roles of organisations that are involved in the country’s aviation sector.

MAVCOM is the economic regulator, which oversees the commercial and economic matters related to the industry.

MAVCOM also covers consumer protection issues and is an independent adviser to the Ministry of Transport (MOT) on economic matters pertaining to civil aviation.

The MOT is the principal policy maker for the aviation industry in Malaysia and is responsible for any government-to-government relationship matters.