KUALA LUMPUR: The Kuala Lumpur International Airport (KLIA) in Sepang, Selangor has been ranked among the top 10 in the world for the category of over 40 million passengers per annum (mppa) in 2020.
This is according to the latest Airport Service Quality (ASQ) survey, which benchmarks the world's best airports in terms of overall passenger satisfaction for terminal safety, facilities, services, and cleanliness.
Malaysia Airports Holdings Bhd (MAHB) group chief executive officer Datuk Mohd Shukrie Mohd Salleh said with the latest achievement, the company was further encouraged to continue with its pursuit for excellence.
He said as a global airport operator, MAHB was driven by the passengers' confidence and satisfaction in its facilities and services.
"This year, passengers can look forward to an improved journey including shorter wait times and facial recognition technology that are part of our Airports 4.0 digital transformation.
"In fact, we recently announced that we will be introducing private health safety screening services for passengers to enjoy faster clearance upon arrival. We hope to restore passenger confidence with the Covid-19 swab test swiftly done within comfortable surroundings," he said.
MAHB said the announcement made by Airports Council International (ACI) early this month was borne out by the airport's continuous efforts in carrying out improvement initiatives despite being severely affected by the Covid-19 pandemic.
It said the passenger traffic remained low due to prolonged domestic and international travel restrictions with only 1.6 million passenger traffic recorded in February.
Nevertheless the airport operator had still forged ahead with mission critical projects, it added.
"Among them were the washroom refurbishment, formation of the Operational Excellence teams that diligently identified and designed improvement initiatives and the introduction of the Exceptional People Practice Playbook, a dual language manual to guide our front liners in their interaction with passengers.
"This had resulted in KLIA improving its score significantly and achieving an annual score of 4.98 over 5.00 in 2020. In the previous year KLIA ranked 17th with a score of 4.76," it said.
Last month, Malaysia received the first batch of vaccines for the immediate roll out of the Covid-19 National Immunisation Programme targeted at front liners.
MAHB said while borders remained close, local passenger movements for its network of 39 airports continued to be impacted by the re-imposition of travel restrictions and movement control orders due to the resurgence of cases.
As for Turkey, the country received its first batch of vaccine in January and more than 2.8 million population has received the first dose to-date with health care workers receiving the second dose in February.
"However, despite the restricted curfew over there, our Turkish operations at Istanbul Sabiha Gokcen International Airport (ISG) has managed to sustain 1.3 million passenger movements for two consecutive months.
"ISG continues to be the majority contributor to the total 1.6 million passenger movements for the group in February," it said.
Shukrie said MAHB remained optimistic on the resiliency of the demand in air travel.
"We have seen strong revival when travel restrictions were lifted in previous times, and for that, we will continue to enhance our offerings. Staying cognisant with the evolving demands of passengers and the aviation industry will help us stay ahead of the competition as we aim to be in the top five airports this year," he added.