KUALA LUMPUR: The Malaysian Aviation Commission (Mavcom) has revised downward Malaysia’s passenger traffic growth forecast to between 4.6 per cent and 5.7 per cent for this year from 5.0 per cent to 6.0 per cent previously due to the coronavirus outbreak.
The commission said the air passenger traffic was mainly affected due to various travel restrictions imposed by international airlines on mainland China.
“We expect it (forecast) to give rise to losses of revenue for airports and local carriers due to disruption caused by coronavirus.
However, we expect carriers and airports will take steps to mitigate the impact of lower in revenue,” chief operating officer Azmir Zain said, adding that the previous forecast was driven by Visit Malaysia 2020 campaign.
Azmir said there would be a minimal direct impact on passenger growth and local carriers’ profitability due to the low volume of passengers between the US and Malaysia, despite the downgrade of Civil Aviation Authority of Malaysia’s safety rating by the US Federal Aviation Authority to Category 2 from Category 1 last year.
Airlines should also improve their connectivity by redeploying the right aircraft to more resilient routes, while increasing capacity, Azmir said.
He said 80 per cent seat capacities in Malaysia were operated by Malaysian carriers while the remaining 20 per cent by foreign airlines.
“Malaysia’s traffic is very much dependent on Malaysian carriers. If they introduce high number of seats, then the country’s supplies do risk in rendering Malaysia’s aviation industry to be less attractive because of the impact of yields,” he said.
Executive chairman Dr Nungsari Ahmad Radhi said the commission was economically concern about higher growth from local carriers as opposed to foreign airlines.
“We have connectivity issue because we do not have more destinations in other continents such as Africa and South America.
“Malaysian airlines tend to fly around the region (four-hour time different) including Australia, China, Japan and India. Therefore, our connectivity to other destinations in the world is not that good,” he said.
He said airlines order plane and deploy their aircraft to destinations with reasonable load factor but sometimes yields are low.
“The reason why international airlines do not come to Malaysia because the yields are low. We play this capacity issue to the point that we squeeze the yield, then other airlines won’t come if yields are not good.
“Yield is related to domestication and related to connectivity. We are concerned about lack of connectivity and lousy yields as well as domestication of airlines route network,” he said.