Chiang Mai International Airport reported approximately 1.1 million passengers in January according to data from Airports of Thailand, the figures coming before the massive number of flight cancelations and related tourism decline due to the spread of the Wuhan coronavirus (COVID-19).
For January 2020, CNX did 2,467 international aircraft movements, up 3.67% over January 2019 for 336,666 international passenger movements, up 2.5%.
While the last month before the impact of the coronavirus may have been solid for international stats, domestic tourism continued to plummet as it did in December.
For January, CNX booked 4,725 domestic aircraft movements, down 13.26% year-over-year on 745,937 passenger movements, down 11.12%.
The domestic tourism stats are highly relevant as they occurred before the coronavirus downturn – the domestic market was already collapsing before virus fears dominated travel plans.
Total aircraft movement for January came in at 7,192, down 8.12% versus January 2019 while total passenger numbers were 1,082,603, down 7.29%.
Chiang Mai wasn’t alone is experiencing a drop in flights and passengers in January be it worse than others. The country’s biggest airport, Suvarnabhumi was down 0.74% in flights and down 4.92% in passengers in January. Don Mueang saw total aircraft movement drop 2.54% and passengers down 0.52%.
With countless flights canceled along with nearly the entire Chinese tourism market disappearing in the space of a month, these figures are the relative calm before the storm. February will be a massacre of the likes Chiang Mai International Airport hasn’t seen since the Asian Financial Crisis.
