GGRAsia – More Macau-mainland, regional flights okayed for 2Q

More Macau-mainland, regional flights okayed for 2Q

Apr 16, 2024 Newsdesk Latest News, Macau, Top of the deck

Macau’s Civil Aviation Authority (AACM) has approved with effect from late April, additional scheduled flights serving Beijing and Ningbo on the Chinese mainland. Starting in July, and coinciding with the school summer-holiday season, it will also permit some extra services on existing regional routes, and some new regional routes. The information was in a Monday update from the AACM.

From April 25, China Southern Airlines can run seven flights a week between Macau and Beijing Daxing International Airport, up from three per week currently. Other airlines that presently run daily flights between Macau and the Chinese capital are China Eastern Airlines and local legacy carrier Air Macau.

From April 28, Air Macau can run 14 flights a week serving the Ningbo route. That carrier is presently the only operator of a direct Macau-Ningbo service, and currently provides seven flights a week.

From July 1, Korean Air can can enter the Macau-Seoul service market with seven flights per week. Air Macau, Jin Air and Jeju Air respectively, already have services to the South Korean capital.

Also from July 1, Air Macau can increase Macau-Kuala Lumpur flights to seven per week, compared to the current four weekly serving the Malaysian capital. Currently, the only other airline that has this service is AirAsia, which runs the route daily.

New regional routes approved include from June 1, Macau-Clark in the Philippines, by Philippines AirAsia; and from July 1, Macau-Fukuoka in Japan, operated by Air Macau.

In other news, the Macau International Airport handled in the first quarter nearly 1.78 million passenger throughputs, according to the airport operating company’s latest flight statistics. That was slightly up on the 1.76-million estimate the airport operator had mentioned for the first three months this year in a late-March update.

The first-quarter tally represented a nearly 77-percent recovery rate relative to the same period in 2019, when Macau’s air hub handled over 2.33 million passenger throughputs.