Malaysia Airports denies KLIA 2 disruption

Malaysia’s state-run airport operator has denied AirAsia‘s claims that flights have been disrupted by work to rectify defects at its new low-cost carrier terminal, KLIA2.

Late last month, AirAsia, which is the largest operator at KLIA2, demanded MYR409 million (US$102m) in damages from Malaysia Airports Holdings Bhd (MAHB), for “loss and damages incurred operating from KLIA2”.

Along with the airline’s complaints about the taxiways and runways being “plagued with defects”, the airline also said it was frequently ordered to move bays, so repair work could be carried out.

But MAHB has now issued a statement saying that “no flight disruptions” have been experienced at KLIA2 due to the repair work.

“Despite the closure of some bays for scheduled rectification works, there are always at least 60 bays available during the day and 66 bays at night,” MAHB said in a statement. “Hence, there has been no situation where airline operations were disrupted by bay closures.”

MAHB also claimed that most of the bay changes were not its fault.

“Data from the flight operations centre over the last few months show that 85% of bay changes [were] the result of requests made by airlines for a number of reasons, such as late arrivals and departure, aircraft swapping and the airline’s ground handlers towing the airplane to the wrong bay,” it said.

Earlier this month, Aireen Omar, CEO of AirAsia’s Malaysian unit, accused MAHB of failing to address the problems at KLIA2. Speaking to the Bernama news agency, Ms Omar said AirAsia has raised the issues to MAHB for over a year, but that the problems had never been resolved.

“It cannot continue like this where we have to accommodate to their deficiency,” Ms Omar was quoted saying. “We are serious and have been working on this for over a year… as soon as we’re asked to move to KLIA2,” she added.

MAHB says it remains “committed to ensuring safety and efficiency at KLIA2”.