PETALING JAYA: KL International Airport (KLIA) has taken the number one spot in the world in the Airport Service Quality (ASQ) survey for Q4’21 by Airports Council International (ACI), placing it alongside nine other international airports in the category that have received a perfect score of 5.00 in the survey.
The achievement underlines the 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, recorded two million passenger movements.
Malaysia Airport managing director Datuk Iskandar Mizal Mahmood stated that passenger movement has significantly picked up in the last few months and there is a need to ensure the service standard is consistent.
“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,” he said in a statement today.
Mizal stated that it is an honour for the country to be placed first alongside other global airports.
“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 saw 8,700 daily average passenger movements, a two-fold increase from the daily average in November 2021 but 2,000 daily average passengers lower from December.
Malaysia Airports pointed out that December has consistently remained a peak month that records the highest passenger movements in a year, pre-Covid as well as during Covid.
It also noted that the resumption of ticket sales for the vaccination travel lane programme late last month and umrah travel on Feb 8 is a positive development for recovery in international travel.
As a whole, it registered a total of 4.7 million passenger movements in January 2022 for both its operations in Malaysia and Turkey, an 11% decline from 5.3 passenger movements reported for the previous month.
The group stated that the outlook for Malaysia’s aviation industry remains positive as January 2022 saw the arrival of a new airline and also saw the addition of several new flight routes.
It 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.
Malaysia Airports also views the impending re-opening of Malaysia’s international borders without the mandatory quarantine requirements as a positive development.
