This June 2020 photo shows the departure area of the Mactan Cebu International Airport (MCIA) under the ‘new normal’.
CEBU CITY, Philippines – The Mactan Cebu International Airport (MCIA), the country’s second-busiest gateway, recorded an all-time low in its air and passenger traffic in 2020 when the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic struck.
Data from Mactan Cebu International Airport Authority (MCIAA) showed that only a total of 2,748,633 outbound and inbound passengers, both from domestic and international destinations, were registered in MCIA in the previous year.
It was an approximately 78-percent drop compared to the 12.6 million passengers it recorded in 2019.
RELATED STORY: MCIA’s passenger traffic up by 11.3% in 2019 – report
Bulk of 2020’s passenger count are those from and bound for domestic destinations, with 1,942,077. International passengers, on the other hand, were only at 806,556.
The same report from MCIAA also saw a gradual increase of domestic passengers passing through MCIA from June to December in 2020, after suffering a 99 percent drop in April when lockdowns nationwide were fully enforced.
Passenger traffic for international flights, however, continues to struggle as airport authorities still record declines from August to December.
MCIA also saw a drastic drop in air traffic.
From 107,794 flights in 2019, the airport only posted a total of 29,548, both for domestic and international, in 2020. This translates to an estimated 73 percent decline.
22,747 out of the 29,548 flights recorded in the previous were those headed for and from local destinations. Only 6,801 were covering international routes.
MCIA is designed to accommodate average yearly traffic of 16 million passengers.
Due to the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic, airport officials decided to consolidate all operations in Terminal 1, its domestic terminal.
They also constructed a COVID-19 testing laboratory capable of doing real-time polymerase chain reaction (RT-PCR), which is located within Terminal 2’s premises.
READ: MCIA molecular lab for COVID-19 tests up and running
/bmjo