Flights operations at Muscat Airport returning to pre-Covid levels

Oman Airports has been working with the relevant agencies such as the Civil Aviation Authority (CAA), the Ministry of Heritage and Tourism (MoHT), and the Royal Oman Police (ROP), to offer incentives to airlines or travel companies as operations were gradually returning to pre-Covid levels.

In a statement issued on Saturday, Oman Airports said that it has been witnessing an increase in the number of passengers and air traffic since the opening of the Muscat Airport’s passenger terminal building in 2018.

“At the beginning of 2020, the number of airlines operating at Muscat International Airport was 32, and that figure has returned after two years of restrictions to spread the Covid-19 pandemic heavily limited the flight travel in the country.”

Oman Airports also underlined the expansion of the budget airline, SalamAir, internationally and locally, which contributed to the rise in the number of air passengers.

The number of inbound passengers through airports in the Sultanate of Oman recorded an increase of 187 per cent to 4,907,599 until the end of July, while the number of outbound passengers increased by 127 per cent compared to the same period the previous year.

The Muscat Airport has been configured to accommodate more than 56 million passengers in later stages to accommodate future travel movement to and from the Sultanate of Oman, which will naturally be accompanied by several incentives, including the visa-free facility to the nationality of 103 countries.

Earlier speaking to the Observer, Aimen al Hosni, CEO of Oman Airports, told the Observer, “The predictions are that the air traffic will return 60 to 60 per cent of the pre-pandemic levels this year, 70 to 80 per cent by 2023 and full 100 per cent by mid-2024-25. Countries with a huge domestic network are likely to perform better in the aviation sector.”

According to the National Centre for Statistics and Information (NCSI), there has been an increase in the number of international and domestic flights at Muscat Airport by 114.8 per cent, as the number of flights reached 34,556 flights by the end of July 2022, while 4,251,173 passengers used the airport, compared to 16,084 flights and 1,647,724 passengers in 2021.