The Facts
-
The first domestic departure MH1432 took Prime Minister Datuk
Seri Dr Mahathir Mohamad to Langkawi at 7.20am on Tuesday.
-
The first international departure was a Malaysia Airlines
flight MH84 to Beijing at 9am.
-
The First domestic arrival was MH1263 from Kuantan at 7.10am.
The first international flight arrival was MH188 from the Maldives at 7.30am.
-
The KLIA will eventually comprise two main terminals and
four satellite buildings. These will have a total capacity of 100 million
passengers annually.
-
The airport can now cater 25 million passengers annually.
By 2020, this is expected to reach 60 million. The annual cargo-handling
capacity is presently 650,000 tonnes. This will be increased to 1.2 million
tonnes.
-
The KLIA has 46 aerobridge gates, two state-of-the-art runways
and 106 aircraft stands compared to the Sultan Abdul Azziz Shah Airport
(former Subang Airport) which has 14 aerobridge and 44 aircraft.
-
About 1,300 security television cameras are installed all
over the airport.
-
Each of two aerotrains connecting the main terminal to Satellite
C for international departures can carry at most 80 people. They
are remote controlled.
-
The KLIA has 216 international and domestic check-in counters.
There are 48 immigration counters for arriving passengers, 61 for departing
passengers and 16 for transfer passengers.
-
This 'Airport in the Forest' is also a 'Forest in the Airport'.
There are more than 100 species of plants including the bougainvillea and
manila palm.
-
It took 25,00 workers from 50 countries 36 months to build
the KLIA at a cost of RM10 billion.
-
In two years, passengers may check-in at the city terminal
- Kuala Lumpur Sentral in Brickfields and then take the direct rail link
to KLIA in Sepang.
My View
After visited the new KLIA
on one week before its official opening on June 29th 1998, I am very
impress by the contemporary design of the building, especially the Main
Terminal Building and the satellite building. However, I found that there
is not a thick forest surrounding the so-called Airport in the forest,
it is actually surrounded by oil palms estate. Besides, it might be a bit
far from Kuala Lumpur (about 40-60 minitues journey) but fortunately there
are several expressway linking Kuala Lumpur to the KLIA.
Despite it cost about RM10
billion to build, but I think it is very economic to expend such amount
of money to build such an advanced airport.
Hopefully this new gateway
for the nation will achieves the expected goals including serving the two
VIP - Queen Elizabeth (KL98 Commonwealth Games) and President Bill Clinton
(APEC Summit) on end of this year.
YT Lee
June 1998
p/s: I'll be glad if I could receive feedback from visitors of this
page. Any comments please send to me at vcity@yahoo.com. 
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