Project Escapes Delay Amid Nation's Crisis : Malaysian Airport On Course
International Herald Tribune
September 13, 1997
Thomas Fuller

In a dusty clearing surrounded by rubber trees and oil palms is the megaproject that slipped through.

Malaysia may have been forced to postpone construction of everything from a $6 billion hydroelectric dam to an administrative capital outside Kuala Lumpur, but plans for the country's new airport remain untouched. The concrete at the Kuala Lumpur International Airport had already set when the market turbulence that plagued the region in the past few months spread to Malaysia.

On Monday, Malaysia's prime minister, Mahathir bin Mohamad, is scheduled to preside over the landing of the first jumbo jet, a Boeing 747 that will take off from Kuala Lumpur's current creaky international airport and touch down at the new facility 50 kilometers (31 miles) south of the capital.

In a country that has built the world's tallest towers and its largest manmade surfing complex, the new airport has likewise been described in superlatives. It will be the largest in Southeast Asia in terms of acreage, and its control tower is said to be one of the tallest in the world. The government has estimated the cost of the central facilities at the airport at $3 billion

It has been spared the fate of the other projects because the Malaysian leadership considers it an integral part of a larger plan to develop a high-technology industrial center. It also is largely paid for.

When it opens for commercial traffic early next year, passenger capacity for the Malaysian capital will more than double, transforming Kuala Lumpur, its planners hope, into a regional air-transport hub. The new airport will be able to handle 25 million passengers a year, roughly the number of people handled in both Bangkok and Singapore.

"If you talk about the region, any airline that comes from Europe can stop at Bangkok, Kuala Lumpur or Singapore," said Khoo Ewe Phung, a senior vice president at Malaysian Airline System Bhd., the country's national carrier. "These three major airports will be the right place for any airline to transit. The choice is theirs. It depends upon how we market the place and the price."

Officials in the Transport Ministry say charges at the new airport will be competitive with those of neighboring airports but have declined to give figures. In Hong Kong, another potential competitor for Kuala Lumpur, airlines recently protested some proposed fees.

"When it comes to the bottom line, it is a bidding war," said Mr. Khoo, who added that if airport charges in the region were lowered, the savings could be passed on to passengers traveling there.

At risk in the regional race to provide modern airline infrastructure is Bangkok, which has been planning a second international airport since 1967. The on-again, off-again project, plagued by political wrangling, has been postponed, and the Thai government has said it will expand the current airport in the meantime.

Kuala Lumpur's new airport, by contrast, was conceived in 1992, and construction work started two years later. "We have had the full backing of the government," said Jamilus Hussein, managing director of Kuala Lumpur International Airport Bhd., the state-owned company charged with the construction. "The financing and decision-making was there."

Tim Goodyear, a spokesman for the International Air Transport Association, said, "If countries do not provide the most up-to-date facilities, then carriers flying in from outside the area could well make a choice to stop in one country rather than another."

But in Asia, he said, the main concern is to keep up with growth.

"It's not a question of Kuala Lumpur trying to steal traffic away from anywhere else," he said. "The whole area is a tremendous growth prospect for aviation."

That view is echoed by Gary Dennison of the air transport association in Singapore.

"I don't think Kuala Lumpur is going to pick up any more traffic with their new airport," he said. "They're just going to keep up with growth in air traffic."

The air transport association estimates that by 2010, more than 50 percent of all international flights will have links to the Asia-Pacific region, up from roughly one-third in 1990.

The new airport features a four-kilometer (2.5-mile) runway — long by industry standards — a train to shuttle international passengers from check-in counters to their gates and an underground, state-of-the-art baggage-handling system. A corridor containing duty-free shops spans almost a kilometer.

But airline analysts say it will take more than new facilities for Kuala Lumpur to become a regional hub.

"Look what's happening with Jakarta," said Maria Hinayon, a statistician at Airports Council International, an industry group in Geneva. "Jakarta is a brand new, beautiful airport, and the traffic is increasing, but it's not a major hub or stopover point."

"We're talking about the biggest growth region in the world in aviation, incredibly congested airports and bigger airplanes going on stream soon," said Barry Grindrod, managing editor of Hong Kong-based Orient Aviation, a trade magazine. "So the fact that these airports are opening is very good for the region and very good for the particular countries and their home airlines."

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