Airport GCEO Speaks
A corporate leader with diverse experience, he is harnessing the latest technological advances to spur Malaysia Airports to greater heights as a smart aviation regional hub.
This month, Dato’ Mohd Shukrie Mohd Salleh reassures that safety protocols at its network of airports remain heightened to curb the spread of Covid-19 not only for travellers but also for the airport community. The recent setting up of new Covid-19 screening facilities for passengers and a vaccine administration centre at KL International Airport (KLIA) are among its latest initiatives.
The airport operator is upbeat about its cargo operations’ performance, welcoming yet another cargo airline into KLIA. It ties up another strategic foreign partnership which will bring forward its aspiration to make Sultan Abdul Aziz Shah Airport into a preferred regional aerospace and business aviation hub.
So far, 80% of our staff have received their forst dose of vaccine against the Covid-19 virus with the setting up of a centre to administer vaccines in KLIA in July. This has also enabled us to vaccinate some 22,000 members of our airport communityranging from our own airport staff to our stakeholders such as the airlines and ground handlers as well as service providers that include our cleaning contractors. For our arriving passengers, we have tied up with BP Clinical Lab, which has a proven track record, to enable them to obtain their Covid-19 RTK and RT-PCR results within 15 minutes and three hours respectively at our newly launched Covid-19 screening facilities.
Reviewing our first half performance for 2021, our air cargo logistics sector has been the silver lining with our total cargo operations in Malaysia up 22% to 468,400 metric tonnes compared to the same period last year. We had encouraging cargo growth from our airports in East Malaysia with the top five airports being Tawau, Sibu, Limbang, Kota Kinabalu and Kuching, driven mainly by higher volume of e-commerce transactions.
We recently welcomed Central Airlines from Shenzhen, China with its thrice weekly flights using the Boeing 737F aircraft. Also known as Zhongzhou Airlines, this Chinese cargo airline, based in Zhengzhou Xinzheng International Airport, joins Kargo Xpress and GetJet Airlines in starting operations at KLIA this year to help strengthen Malaysia’s positions as regional cargo hub, specifically as an e-commerce distribution centre.
Moving in Tandem with our Subang Regeneration Plan, our latest collaboration with Teknopark Istanbul is expected to bring in more aerospace innovation and new generation technologies such as robotics, data analytics, machine learning and artificial intelligence. Through our new Turkish partner, sited in the northeast of Istanbul Sabiha Gökçen International Airport that is managed by us, we hope to develop a cooperative framework for industrial and technology park development via the exchange of knowledge on best practice models.
Our immediate plan is to hold a virtual forum to convince Teknopark Istanbul’s community of over 340 Turkish aerospace and high-tech companies to set up their international hubs here. Our Subang Regeneration Plan is slated to grow our ecosystem by three times, double the number of global and local operators to more than 100 that will create and support a 19,000-strong high-skilled workforce.