Latest global airport survey place KL International Airport No.1 in the world for 2021
KL International Airport (KLIA) has been placed at world’s number 1 spot in the Airport Service Quality (ASQ) survey for Q4 2021. This placement is achieved alongside 9 other international airports in the same category of over 40 million passengers per annum (mppa) that had all received a perfect score of 5.00 in the global survey. The results were recently made known by Airports Council International (ACI) who is responsible for benchmarking the world’s best airports in terms of overall passenger satisfaction for terminal safety, facilities, services, and cleanliness. KLIA’s latest achievement provides passengers with added assurance on the airport’s continuous commitment to improve airport experience despite rigorous travel SOPs implemented to curb the COVID-19 pandemic. Last month, Malaysia Airports recorded a total of 2.7 million passenger movements at its network of local airports whereas its Turkish asset, Istanbul Sabiha Gokcen International Airport (ISG) recorded 2.0 million passenger movements.
Dato’ Iskandar Mizal Mahmood, Managing Director of Malaysia Airports said, “The last few months have seen passenger movements significantly picking up. With this increase, we need to ensure that service standards at the airport is consistently maintained. The previous lull had enabled us to implement many improvement initiatives and the perfect ASQ score is a validation of the effort put in by the entire airport community. To be placed first alongside other global airports is also an honour for the country. We are ready to welcome travellers once international travel restrictions are lifted. As an example, we had consistently achieved a perfect score of 5.00 for ASQ element of ‘feeling safe and secure’ in 2021.”
With international travel still restricted, the Group’s passenger traffic performance in Malaysia is driven by domestic travel. For Malaysia, domestic traffic was recorded at 2.5 million passengers last month, making up 90% of Malaysia’s total passenger movements. Meanwhile, January’s 8,700 daily average passenger movements, recorded a much higher daily average than November 2021 by 2-fold though slightly lower than December 2021 by 2,000 daily average passengers. December, on the other hand, has consistently remained a peak month that records the highest passenger movements in a year, pre-COVID as well as during COVID. The resumption of ticket sales for the VTL programme late last month and Umrah travel on 8 February is a positive development for recovery in international travel. As a whole, the Malaysia Airports Group registered a total of 4.7 million passenger movements in January 2022 for both its operations in Malaysia and Turkey, decreasing by 11% when compared to the preceding month’s record of 5.3 million passengers.
The outlook for Malaysia’s aviation industry remains positive as January 2022 witnessed the arrival of a new airline and also saw the addition of several new flight routes. Malaysia Airports welcomed inaugural flights by SKS Airways (KI) at its Pangkor and Redang STOLports (Short Take Off and Landing Airports). Both STOLports now receive daily flights using the Twin Otter aircraft from Sultan Abdul Aziz Shah Airport in Subang. Apart from that, 4 new flight routes were also introduced by AirAsia (AK) in the same month to enhance the connectivity between East and West Malaysia. The new routes included Kuching (KCH) – Langkawi (LGK), Penang (PEN) – Sibu (SBW), Johor Bahru (JHB) – Bintulu (BTU), Kota Kinabalu (BKI) – Kuala Terengganu (TGG).
The Group also views the impending re-opening of Malaysia’s international borders without the mandatory quarantine requirements as a positive development. Malaysia Airports is ready to facilitate with the necessary health SOPs and processes required at the airports for the continued safety and wellbeing of passengers.