SEPANG – Malaysia Airports held its KLIA awards presentation to honour partners with exceptional performance for the year 2013. The prestigious KLIA Awards is the ideal platform for Malaysia Airports to reward its partners with outstanding performances and services. It is aimed at recognising and motivating all KLIA business partners that relentlessly push the boundaries of distinction in their fields, enabling KLIA to further advance in service excellence.
KLIA Awards was first introduced in 2006. It has gained reputation as one of the most important events in the calendar of the nation’s aviation industry. KLIA Awards winners were chosen based on their 2013 achievement in sectors such as passenger movement, growth factor, sales performance, international recognition as well as their service performance.
YB Datuk Abd. Aziz Kaprawi, Deputy Minister of Transport, in his speech highlighted the importance of the aviation industry to our country’s economic development, “The rapid growth of the aviation sector has played an important role in Malaysia’s economic development, especially in trade and tourism industries. Its development has become the benchmark for the success of our country’s transportation sector. We depend on a good transportation network that connects Malaysians to each other and to the rest of the world in order to prosper in today’s global economy. Malaysia is very fortunate to be uniquely positioned at the heart of Asia; a country that enjoys excellent international air links in a region with a fast-growing population that are flying more and more.”
He added, “Realising this fact, we strategically positioned our flagship international gateway, KL International Airport, KLIA, to seize opportunities that this catchment presents. Along the way, KLIA has received countless awards and earned its reputation as one of the preferred hubs in the region.”
On the significance of klia2 towards enhancing KLIA’s status, Tan Sri Wan Abdul Aziz, Chairman of Malaysia Airports said, “The opening of klia2 has boosted KLIA’s position as one of Southeast Asia’s preferred aviation hub. The KLIA system is now the only airport in this region to boast three independent runways. This will significantly improve the air traffic at the airport as it will ease congestion and reduce taxiing time. The enhanced comfort level and better connectivity available in klia2 when compared to LCCT has allowed us to create a seamless and memorable travelling experience to passengers. More importantly, the enhanced capacity will support the growth of our airline partners.”
The preliminary numbers for passenger traffic at KLIA as at October this year was recorded at over 40 million passengers with 4.2% growth compared to the same period last year. The overall international passengers at KLIA grew by 6.3%, while domestic traffic decreased by 0.8%. Due to the shift of Lion Air and Malindo Air from KLIA Main to klia2 terminal, the traffic at KLIA Main had declined 4.4% while the number of passengers combined from LCCT, previously, and klia2 increased by 13.7%.
This year saw KLIA recognised as the top 3 World’s Best Airport in the 40-50 million passengers per annum category in the Skytrax 2014 World Airport Awards. KLIA was also recently announced to be the winner of the Large Airport of the Year Award at CAPA Awards for Excellence in Asia Pacific Aviation 2014. These accolades reflect the quality of KLIA, in terms of facilities as well as customer services. These awards also reflect the dedication and teamwork of the KLIA community in being the best.
Approximately 400 guests attended the event which was held at the Sama-Sama Hotel Kuala Lumpur International Airport.