A leading corporate leader with strong financial background and extensive experience in various fields, he is currently steering Malaysia Airports to greater heights.
This month, Raja Azmi Raja Nazuddin shares his optimism on the growing demand for domestic and international air travel into Malaysia, backed not only by its own data but also recent findings from the International Air Transport Association (IATA) on the global aviation sector.
“I am happy to note that our latest May passenger traffic figure for the group’s network of airports continues to record growth of 3.8% to 135.1 million on a 12-month basis. The passenger movements performance in our Malaysian airports in particular show “uniquely positive” results for both domestic and international air travel despite the month of Ramadhan.
As indicated by our recently released first quarter results for 2019, the group’s revenue rose by 3% to RM1,252.3 million due to higher passenger growth, of which the Malaysia operations contributed RM931.7 million in revenue.
While our Malaysia’s traffic growth has been driven by the domestic sector, our international traffic movements has also been improving, thanks to continued efforts to add new airlines and routes.
Although IATA recently downgraded its 2019 outlook for the global air transport industry to achieve US$28 billion profit instead of its earlier US$35.5 billion forecast in December 2018, IATA said the routes served by the aviation sector is expected to grow to over 58,000 this year while the global commercial fleet will increase by 3.67% to over 30,697 aircraft.
Airlines are also expected to take delivery of more than 1,770 new aircraft in 2019 to replace older and less fuel-efficient aircraft while global spend on tourism enabled by air transport will increase by 7.8% to US$909 billion.”
“On the home front, Malaysia’s tourism industry has shown positive growth of 16.9% to RM21.4 billion in terms of tourist expenditure during the first quarter of 2019 while its arrival figures showed 2.7% increase to 6,696,230 tourists. All this augurs well for the aviation sector as we work very closely with the tourism stakeholders and airlines to achieve the numbers and raise the awareness of Malaysia as a top destination, including for health and wellness tourism as well as for meetings, incentives, conference and events.
This is also in line with our goal to be the preferred airport for the region. As such, we are constantly on our toes to improve the experience at our airports not only for our passengers but also for other users including the airlines’ crew. Our Operational Readiness, Activation and Transition exercise for the new dedicated processing centre for departing airline crew at klia2 has been successfully carried out.
This new integrated centre will reduce the processing time of departing crew to reach the boarding gates by 60% for domestic and 44% for international respectively. We believe in improving the operational efficiency for our airline partners so that they can enjoy enhanced business processes and prudent cost management.”