MAHB Announces Five More Airlines to KLIA

2nd Oct 2017

According to the airports operator Malaysia Airports Holdings Bhd (MAHB), five new carriers will soon start operating from the Kuala Lumpur International Airport (KLIA). Two of these, said MAHB Managing Director Badlisham Ghazali, will be from countries that are not yet present in KLIA.

Badlisham spoke to the media today at the Khazanah Megatrends Forum 2017, where he said:

I just come back from the World Routes Forum 2017 in Barcelona, Spain where multiple discussion were had and I am hopeful that at least five more new airlines will join us next year. As you know, we are always actively looking for partners and new airlines to come join us, for 2017 we already saw eight new airlines joining us and since everything in aviation is seasonal, we are not expecting any more new airlines for the rest of the year.

He also spoke about the previous year, which was a good one when it comes to passenger traffic. Still, Mr. Badlisham is confident that this year local airports will go over the last year’s 88.83 million passengers.

He added:

We have seen really good passenger volume in the third quarter and we are expecting to sustain this trend until the end of the year, and we are expecting another bumper month in November and December as people typically travel at the end of the year. Our original (growth) forecast (for passenger volume) was at six per cent this year but we have revised that to eight per cent, and I believe we may end up at some 90 million this year for Malaysia as a whole.

Asked about his budget wishlist, Badlisham said that several MAHB’s airports are in need of an infrastructure upgrade:

For airports, we have the volume but we need more capacity (upgrading) for airports infrastructure and that's something that the government has to look into. In fact, Kota Kinabalu and Penang requires some infrastructure funding in the couple of months.

So far, in 2017, eight new carriers have started flying to Malaysia and as of 31^st August this year, international traffic at MAHB-managed airports went up 15.8% year-on-year (YoY) to 5.5 million passengers and domestic traffic increased slightly by 1.3% to 5.9 million passengers YoY.