KKIA Experiences Good Growth After Consolidation of Operations

Malaysia Airports has been collaborating closely with the state of Sabah to boost its tourism. An RM10 million  incentive had been pledged to the state for promoting destinations and inbound tourism. 

Sabah has also benefited greatly from the consolidation of operations at Kota Kinabalu International Airport (KKIA) undertaken in late 2015, in terms of  better efficiency and connectivity network at KKIA by all airlines.

As a result, in 2016, Sabah had enjoyed passenger traffic growth of 10.5% increasing to 7.3 million, while the first half of 2017 had recorded double digit growth of 15.3%, increasing to 3.9 million. 

International passenger traffic for the first half 2017 had also grown substantially by 22.5% to 1.2 million. 

Passenger traffic movements for low-cost sector in KKIA too, had been encouraging as recorded by all *8* low cost carriers operating at KKIA. In 2016, it had grown by 10.2% while the first half of 2017, the low cost sector had grown by 21.4%.

From 2016 to date we have seen *3* new low cost carriers operating at KKIA namely Air Seoul, Jeju Air and Spring Airlines.