According to Maldives Airports Company Limited (MACL), the Velana International Airport (VIA) observed double increment on passenger movements in January 2022.
As per the airport’s management company, passenger movement in the previous increased twice that of the same month in 2021. In 2021, passenger movements in January were recorded at 257,693 whereas, passenger movements during the previous month reached 446,688.
Moreover, the airport observed more outbound travelers than inbound travelers. According to MACL’s statistics, during January 2022 the total number of outbound travelers reached 163,908 while the total number of inbound travelers stood at 158,409.
In addition to this, the airport venue recorded a total of 27,822 transit passengers during the review month.
Apart from this, domestic travel statistics confirm 49,971 departures from Male’ to other destinations and 46,578 arrivals to Male’ city.
In the meantime, the air traffic movement had shown significant improvement during the review month as well. As per MACL, the authority recorded a total of 5,694 air traffic movements in January 2022 compared to a total of 4,009 air traffic movements in the same month last year.
Out of the total flight movements recorded during the review month, 3,052 were international flight movements and 2,642 were domestic flight movements.
At the time, a total of 26 international airlines operate scheduled flights to the Maldives with 11 other airlines running chartered flights.
The airport venue had reported a record air traffic movement on Saturday of last week, when the total air traffic movement was recorded at 839.