Virus spooked 350,000 passengers this year in the Philippines: Airport

ALMOST NORMAL A passenger walks inside the Ninoy Aquino International Airport, where flight operations are starting to normalize. PHOTO BY MIKE ALQUINTO. Sketched by the Pan Pacific Agency.

MANILA, Feb 20, 2020, The Manila Times. The Philippines has lost about 350,000 passengers this year due to the coronavirus disease 2019 (Covid-19), the Manila International Airport Authority (MIAA) said on Wednesday, The Manila Times reported.

MIAA General Manager Eddie Monreal said the number of international and domestic travelers dropped by 16 percent and 3 percent, respectively, from January 25 to February 17 this year.

“We have tracked down since January 25 up to two days ago, February 17, the decline in the volume of international passengers by a little over 16 percent,” Monreal said in a press briefing in Malacañang.

“Domestic travelers also dropped by a little over 3 percent. So that’s our losses in terms of passengers’ impact,” he added.

Monreal said the Philippines lost about 300,000 international passengers and 50,000 domestic passengers during that period.

He also said that inbound and outbound flights had dropped by a little over 22 percent because some local carriers canceled flights.

Based on data provided by the MIAA, international passengers from January 25 to February 17, decreased to 1,352,692, from the 1,624,698 recorded over the same period last year.

The volume of domestic passengers also decreased to 1,406,976 from Jan. 25 to Feb. 17, 2020.

A total of 1,456,705 domestic passengers were recorded over the same period last year.
The MIAA chief said the travel market was slowly recovering with the lifting of travel bans on Hong Kong, Macau and Taiwan.

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