A quarantine officer uses an electronic thermometer at Incheon International Airport, west of Seoul, on Jan. 21, 2020, to check the temperature of passengers arriving by plane from Wuhan, China, and Southeast Asia. (Yonhap)
SEOUL, Feb. 29 (Korea Bizwire) — The daily number of passengers traveling through Incheon International Airport dipped on-year this month, data showed Saturday, following the spread of the new coronavirus around the globe.
The main gateway to Seoul handled around 120,000 passengers on average every day this month, a whopping 42 percent decrease from 206,000 a year earlier, the data showed.
The number of airplanes that arrived or departed from the airport fell 15.6 percent on-year to reach 25,256, the data added.
On Wednesday, the daily number of passengers traveling through the airport even fell below the 80,000 mark for the first time since 2012, when the figure stood at 55,000 after international flights were canceled due to Typhoon Bolaven.
Flights to China have been canceled after the country emerged as the epicenter of the COVID-19 outbreak.
More flights were suspended recently as a growing number of countries imposed entry bans on travelers from South Korea.
(Yonhap)
