Patrick Comerford
We had just 2½ hours between flights in Kuala Lumpur late on Thursday night, between one flight arriving from Muscat in Oman and the next, much shorter flight on to Kuching in Sarawak, arriving after midnight on Thursday night or early on Friday morning.
For some international travellers, I imagine, Kuala Lumpur International Airport is probably just another airport transit lounge they pass through as they catch their next flight.
The airport is about 55 km from Kuala Lumpur city centre, but transport links are good enough to allow a short city visit possible if your stopover is long and well-timed. Passengers with at least six hours – and ideally more – may find it worthwhile to make the journey. The fastest option is the KLIA Ekspres train, which connects the airport to KL Sentral in under 30 minutes. KLIA Transit trains are slower with more stops, while buses and taxis are also available.
Once in the city centre, many visitors head for the Petronas Twin Towers or Kuala Lumpur Tower for city views. Areas like Chinatown and Little India offer quick cultural snapshot, Jalan Alor is popular for casual street food, and KL Forest Eco Park is a pocket of greenery close to the city centre.
But getting into Kuala Lumpur’s city centre needs at least an hour and then another hour to get back to the airport – a return trip that requires better planning and more time that we thought we had on our hands. Allowing at least two hours of travel time to and from the city centre and then at least another hour back at the airport for security and passport controls and to check back in again.We were on a marathon journey or odyssey that was taking 26 hours in all, and, apart from it being very late at night, we simply did not have those six hours on hand.
Kuala Lumpur International Airport (KLIA) is a massive hub in Sepang, about 55 km south of the Malaysian capital. It is the busiest airport in Malaysia, one of the largest in south-east Asia by land area alone – about 100 sq km – and one of the 30 busiest airports in the world, with over 57 million passengers a year.
The concept for Kuala Lumpur International Airport dates back to 1993, when the Malaysian government decided that the old airport, Subang International Airport, was too small for future needs and that Kuala Lumpur needed a bigger, more modern airport.
KLIA was planned as part of the Multimedia Super Corridor, a major project to develop technology and business in Malaysia. The main terminal was designed by the Japanese architect Kisho Kurokawa (1934-2007), and features Islamic-inspired roof structures.
The plan was ambitious, with three main stages, and the goal was to have three runways and two terminals, each with two satellite terminals.
The first stage involved building the main terminal and one satellite terminal. This allowed the airport to handle 25 million passengers. It also included two full-service runways. In this first stage, the airport had 60 gates where planes could connect directly to the terminal. It also had 20 remote parking spots and 80 places for aircraft to park. There were also four maintenance hangars and fire stations.
The second stage was designed to increase the airport's capacity to 35 million passengers a year. The third stage aims to make the airport big enough for 100 million passengers a year.
KLIA officially opened on 27 June 1998, just a week before Hong Kong International Airport opened, and in time for the 1998 Commonwealth Games in Malaysia.
One of the more unusual features is the ‘forest in the airport’, with a transplanted rainforest that includes real plants and elevated walkways, trees and a stream, and a complete section of rainforest transplanted from the Malaysian jungle.
The airport even has a free cinema lounge in the Satellite Building. The space features couches and reclining seats, with popular films shown on large screens.
The airport has two terminals: KLIA1 and KLIA2. Terminal 1 is the main airport, the busiest in Malaysia and the primary hub for Malaysia Airlines; Terminal 2 is the low-cost carrier terminal from which Air Asia operates. KLIA2 is connected to a full shopping centres, known as Gateway@klia2, that includes shops, restaurants and services, and it feels more like a city-centre shopping area than a terminal add-on.
Eventually, we had a stopover of just 1½ or 2 hours but – and forgive the pun – it flew by. We had to change terminals, get a light rail, check-in all over again. We got out next departure gate on time, but with only 15 or 30 minutes to spare, enough time to grab that mandatory cup of coffee but notthing more.
Traffic, passport queues, and security re-entry all add time, so city sightseeing probably works best for confident travellers with a generous buffer before the next flight. With tight schedules, it never even entered our minds late on Thursday night.
Perhaps on the return journey from Kuching two weeks from now, I may look at the option for short peek at Kuala Lumpur. But it’s obviously going to involve clever booking so that I don’t miss my flights back to Muscat and on to London.
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