The number of arriving and departing commercial flights in Macau declined by 81.4 percent to 13,676 last year than in 2019, the Statistics and Census Bureau (DSEC) announced in a statement yesterday.

Last month, there were 1,117 commercial flights arriving in and departing from the local airport, a year-on-year drop of 82.9 percent.

Macau’s aviation sector has been hard hit by the COVID-19 pandemic since early last year. The sector’s performance has slowly improved since September’s resumption of the central government’s Individual Visit Scheme (IVS) for all mainlanders to travel to Macau.

The local government admitted late last year that it was not able to predict how long the “very difficult” time for Macau’s civil aviation sector would last amid the still serious COVID-19 pandemic.

Meanwhile, according to the statement, which is about the city’s transport and communications statistics for last month, the number of licensed motor vehicles in Macau stood at 244,110 at the end of last year, up by 1.4 percent year-on-year.