KUALA LUMPUR: KUALA Lumpur International Airport is the world's best among airports with over 40 million passengers per annum, according to the latest Airport Service Quality survey.
The ASQ surver for the fourth quarter of 2021 put KLIA together with nine other international airports in the same category, said Malaysia Airports Holdings Bhd (MAHB).
The 10 top airports in the category received a perfect score of 5.00 in the global survey by Airports Council International (ACI).
ACI is responsible for benchmarking the world's best airports in terms of overall passenger satisfaction for terminal safety, facilities, services and cleanliness.
MAHB said KLIA's latest achievement provided passengers with added assurance on the airport's continuous commitment to improve airport experience despite rigorous travel standard operating procedures (SOPs) implemented to curb the Covid-19 pandemic.
Last month, MAHB recorded a total of 2.7 million passenger movements at its network of local airports whereas its Turkish asset, Istanbul Sabiha Gokcen International Airport (ISG) recorded 2.0 million passenger movements.
MAHB managing director Datuk Iskandar Mizal Mahmood said the last few months had seen passenger movements significantly picking up.
"With this increase, we need to ensure that service standards at the airport is consistently maintained. The previous lull had enabled us to implement many improvement initiatives and the perfect ASQ score is a validation of the effort put in by the entire airport community," he said in a statement today.
Iskandar said to be placed first alongside other global airports was also an honour for Malaysia.
"We are ready to welcome travellers once international travel restrictions are lifted. As an example, we had consistently achieved a perfect score of 5.00 for ASQ element of 'feeling safe and secure' in 2021," he added.
With international travel still restricted, the group's passenger traffic performance in Malaysia is driven by domestic travel.
For Malaysia, domestic traffic was recorded at 2.5 million passengers last month, making up 90 per cent of Malaysia's total passenger movements.
Meanwhile, January's 8,700 daily average passenger movements recorded a much higher daily average than November 2021 by two-fold though slightly lower than December 2021 by 2,000 daily average passengers.
MAHB said the resumption of ticket sales for the Vaccinated Travel Lane (VTL) programme late last month and Umrah travel on Feb 8 was a positive development for recovery in international travel.
As a whole, the MAHB group registered a total of 4.7 million passenger movements in January 2022 for both its operations in Malaysia and Turkey, 11 per cent lower when compared to the preceding month's record of 5.3 million passengers.
MAHB said the outlook for Malaysia's aviation industry remained positive as January 2022 witnessed the arrival of a new airline and also saw the addition of several new flight routes.
It welcomed inaugural flights by SKS Airways (KI) at its Pangkor and Redang STOLports (Short Take Off and Landing Airports).
Both STOLports now receive daily flights using the Twin Otter aircraft from Sultan Abdul Aziz Shah Airport in Subang.
"Additionally, our new flight routes were also introduced by AirAsia in the same month to enhance the connectivity between East and West Malaysia," MAHB said.
The new routes included Kuching-Langkawi, Penang-Sibu, Johor Bahru-Bintulu, Kota Kinabalu-Kuala Terengganu.
MAHB views the impending re-opening of Malaysia's international borders without the mandatory quarantine requirements as a positive development.
It said it was ready to facilitate with the necessary health SOPs and processes required at the airports for the continued safety and wellbeing of passengers.