The city’s airport handled almost 1.8 million passengers during the first quarter of this year, according to figures released by the Macau International Airport Company (also known by its Portuguese acronym CAM).
While this number marks an increase of 138 percent against the 757,700 passengers registered during the same period last year, it is still only 77 percent of the 2.34 million people that passed through the airport in the initial three months of 2019 – the year before the Covid-19 pandemic struck.
Quarter-on-quarter, the results from the initial three months of this year represent an increase of around 13 percent in relation to the 1.6 million passengers that were recorded in the fourth quarter of 2023.
[See more: Passenger volumes up at Macao airport ahead of tourism campaign]
Overall, the data suggests that Macao’s aviation industry is continuing its gradual post-pandemic recovery, a point that was acknowledged by CAM during its annual meeting last month, when it reported an total passenger volume of 5.15 million in 2023, or a recovery of 54 percent against 2019 levels.
The 2024 Easter holiday period between 29 March and 1 April also saw strong numbers for the airport, which reported a flow of 88,978 passengers.
The figure represented a surge of roughly 80 percent relative to the same period in 2023 or 74 percent of the numbers in Easter 2019.
