Expanding KLIA sets new target
Guest Writers are not employed, compensated or governed by TD, opinions and statements are from the specific writer directly
Continued growth in traffic at Kuala Lumpur International Airport (KLIA) has given its operator the confidence to raise its full-year target for the hub.
KLIA is now planning to welcome 26.7 million passengers at KLIA’s main passenger terminal in 2014 – more than the previous full-year target of 26.0m passengers. This optimism stems from data showing that KLIA’s main terminal handled 10.7m passengers in the first five months of the year, 11% more than the same period in 2013. Traffic at the low-cost terminal (combining the old LCCT and new KLIA2) reached 9.6m, up 12% year-on-year.
This means that collectively, KLIA handled 20.3m passengers in January-May 2014, up 12% compared with the same period last year.
“This significant growth in traffic performance was due to the rising demand for air travel, expansion of routes and increased frequencies by both full service and low-cost carriers,” said Badlisham bin Ghazali, the recently-appointed managing director of Malaysia Airports (MAHB), in a speech to mark the airport’s 16th anniversary.
“We have long surpassed the original target growth in our business direction document which was to record 60m passengers annually by the year 2014,” he added, referring to MAHB’s target for its nationwide airport traffic.
Last year Malaysia’s 39 airports handled 79.6m passengers. And 47.5m of these, or 60% of the total, were recorded at KLIA. This marked a 19.1% increase compared to 2012.
Comments are closed.