Dato’ Iskandar Mizal Mahmood returns to Malaysia Airports after almost 20 years with his wealth of experience gleaned from many multinationals and government- linked companies to elevate and transform Malaysia Airports in the fast-changing aviation landscape with new travel norms and innovative technological advances.
This month, he shares how the launch of new routes and increased frequencies at its key airports, in particular KL International Airport (KLIA) and Kota Kinabalu International Airport, are bringing in more tourist arrivals into the country and helping in the sector’s recovery. The passenger traffic movements have also been aided by the upcoming elections in certain states and Merdeka Day holiday break. To ensure continuous service excellence at Malaysia’s flagship airport, KLIA has joined the world’s first and only Airport Customer Experience Accreditation (ACEA) programme by Airports Council International (ACI) where he was recently elected to represent ACI Asia Pacific (APAC) at the ACI World Governing Board.
I am happy to see not only more scheduled flights coming and later increasing their frequencies as passenger demand grows but also new chartered services albeit they are available only for a limited period.
Two recent examples are Zhejiang Loong Air’s thrice- weekly chartered flights from Xian to Kota Kinabalu from July 18 until August 31 using the Airbus A320 aircraft and Batik Air Malaysia’s Chengdu-Langkawi chartered flights from July 22-31.
Coupled with Air China’s inaugural flight on July 19 from Chengdu where more than 150 passengers entered KLIA Terminal 1, this will boost the number of tourist arrivals from China, one of our top five markets for the first quarter of this year, according to the statistics compiled by Tourism Malaysia with the cooperation of Immigration Department.
We have been working closely with Tourism Malaysia to promote attractions from the various states at KLIA as it is the main gateway in our country.
Having started with Sarawak through the Homestay Association since June, Tourism Malaysia’s booth on level five of the MainTerminal Building KLIA was recently promoting the east coast state of Terengganu.
Other states, namely Negeri Sembilan (NS), Melaka and Perlis, will follow suit until December, which I hope will generate more domestic travels as well.
With the state elections taking place in Selangor, Penang, NS, Kedah, Kelantan and Terengganu on August 12, we expect more upcoming traffic.
MYAirline, for instance, has mounted extra flights from Kuala Lumpur (KUL) to Kota Bharu, Kelantan and for our Independence Day celebration TransNusa has launched its Madani Merdeka campaign offering low fares for its KUL-Jakarta (CGK) as well as CGK-Yogyakarta and CGK– Bali route until August 31.
On another note, honoured to be one of the three elected representatives of ACI APAC on the ACI World Governing Board during a special meeting held at the recent ACI APAC Regional Assembly in Kobe, Japan, I have made sure that KLIA is part of this global organisation’s ACEA programme.
Keen to bring about major improvements to our flagship airport operations in order to ensure a seamless passenger experience, we view this as a long-term commitment.
Over the past few months, we have introduced and expedited new initiatives to meet our passengers’ evolving needs as we aspire to get KLIA back into the top-tier rankings of the world’s best airports.This will be our brand promise of hosting joyful connections.