Macau International Airport has known for at least three years that it faced a dramatic drop in transit passengers once direct flights between Taiwan and mainland China resumed.
The former director of operations warned back in 2005 the airport needed a new strategy if it was to maintain its business. Predictably nothing happened. The frustrated director upped sticks and took a new job at a grown up airport—Singapore’s Changi.
MIA’s shareholders and Air Macau, the monopoly flag carrier that needs to be offered first right of refusal every time a new direct route is proposed, then proceeded to fight among themselves for a couple of years. They were no doubt reassured that with annual record growth in Macau’s gaming revenues, there would be accompanying natural growth in air travel to Macau that would make up for any fall off in Taiwan passenger numbers.
That was then and this is now. Macau’s tendency of having no ‘Plan B’ in an emergency, or under-engineering whatever ‘Plan B’ it does have, looks like it could come to haunt MIA.
The airport is likely to face a 10 percent year-on-year fall in passenger numbers in 2009 to 4.5 million according to an official quoted in the Macao Daily Post.
Figures from the airport’s operating company—CAM—quoted in the Post showed that the number of transit passengers, most of whom came from the Chinese mainland and Taiwan, dropped 39 percent to 1.3 million last year.
To be fair to MIA, the operation hasn’t been helped by yo-yoing oil prices and the stop-start approach of budget carriers that have launched direct services from new destinations in Southeast Asia only to drop the routes a few months later when the going got tough.
Many readers will be aware though that ‘MIA’ stands not only for ‘Macau International Airport’ but for a more martial phrase—’missing in action’.
Let’s hope MIA’s management won’t be posted ‘MIA’ in 2009.
