KUALA LUMPUR: The Immigration Department will be opening several common counters to process all types of passports at the Kuala Lumpur International Airport (KLIA) in an effort to reduce snaking queues during peak travelling periods.
Malaysia Airports Holdings Bhd (MAHB) in a statement today said that the decision made by the Immigration Department director-general Datuk Seri Mustafar Ali during a meeting between the Immigration Department, MAHB and Airline Operators Committee (AOC) on Tuesday.
MAHB said that the meeting, which was chaired by Mustafar, was aimed at delivering improved passenger service at the KLIA, particularly on reducing passenger queuing time which include the rearrangement and restructuring of the counter locations to make the process flow smoother for both foreign and local passengers.
MAHB managing director, Datuk Badlisham Ghazali, said that the Immigration Department has pledged that 30 counters will be opened and manned around the clock at the arrival level, and 10 counters at the departure level of the KLIA Main Terminal.
He also assured airport users that the new common counter system will work well following the previously implemented counter guiding light system which was installed in September last year.
“The counter guiding light system serves as a method to quickly usher passengers to the next counter as soon as it becomes available. This had proven to reduce passenger queuing time significantly,” he said.
Badlisham added that MAHB will also be deploying the Airport CARE Ambassadors, who are part of a newly formed customer experience team, to help with managing the queues and attending to passenger needs.
He said, at the same time, the airport operator is also piloting a digital initiative with the Immigration Department as part of a bigger digitisation initiative at the airport to improve total airport experience for the airport users.
“We need to properly understand and analyse our data so that we can all work together with one common objective to serve our passengers better.
“Thus, we will be working closely with all parties to attain the necessary data to facilitate the automation of passenger queue management.
“Automation of the system and real-time data analysis will allow us to make better and quicker decisions on how to ease the congestion at the airport,” he said.
MAHB said the Immigration Department will also be installing 10 additional autogates at KLIA and klia2 each, after the Chinese New Year celebration.