KUALA LUMPUR: Malaysia Airports Holdings Berhad (MAHB) has blamed its aging trains for the latest breakdown at the Kuala Lumpur International Airport (KLIA) today which led 20 people to walk on its tracks back to the terminal building.
The breakdown happened at 5.30pm and a video of the incident has since gone viral.
The 30 second clip that was made available to the New Straits Times showed over 20 passengers walking along the tracks.
MAHB managing director Datuk Badlisham Ghazali said their two existing trains which have been operating for nearly 20 years were due for an overhaul.
He said a major overhaul would be done on the two trains by the end of the year.
“We are also half way through heavy maintenance work on the two trains,” he said after confirming the incident.
On the latest breakdown, he said an engineer was on site one minute after they received the alert.
“However, passengers had already prised open the aerotrain doors and started walking on the tracks even before the engineer arrived.
“Five passengers however remained on the train as seen in the video.
“As per standard operating procedure there should have been an announcement, but the passengers were too impatient so they started to walk,” he said, adding that the engineer later manually drove the train to the building.
The breakdown is the second in three months.
He said passengers then did the same thing and started to walk on the tracks even before engineers could rectify the problem.
As an immediate solution, Badlisham said engineers would be stationed on the trains to ensure there were no more such incidents.
Meanwhile, Deputy Transport Minister Datuk Abdul Aziz Kaprawi urged MAHB to resolve the issue as soon as possible to prevent a reoccurrence .
However, Abdul Aziz said despite the reported malfunction, the train could still be used for another five years as maintenance had been carried out as per schedule.
“Sometimes mechanical issue occur that have nothing to do with wear and tear.”