The Kuala Lumpur International Airport (KLIA) is at a grind, with scores of flights delayed and angry passengers left stranded.
The system failure started on Wednesday but was at its worst yesterday.
Among the solutions that are being used, Malaysia Airports said yesterday, includes the replacement of hardware equipment.
“We have received a delivery of the equipment which will undergo testing tonight (August 22). We hope to resolve the situation by tomorrow morning (23 August 2019).
In a statement issued this morning (August 23), Malaysia Airports says a team is still in the midst of stabilising the system at KUL.
“As mentioned earlier, system disruptions have caused flights delays. In mitigating this, we have utilised all 38 remote bays at KLIA Main Terminal to cater to aircraft that cannot proceed to the scheduled gates as they are still occupied.
“Following this, we have also provided four additional buses, and ground handling services for the airlines to facilitate passenger movements to ferry passengers to the remote bays from the terminal and vice versa. This is to ease the flow of passengers at the gates affected by the delayed flights. We have also extended the operating hours at all our other airports nationwide last night to cater to the delayed departing flights from KUL,” says the statement.
A remote bay is an open aircraft parking bay, which does not use or is not attached to terminal PBB (Passenger Boarding Bride/Aerobridge). This means passengers have to disembark the aircraft using the passenger’s steps.
On its Instagram account, the Airport says as at 10 pm last night, 68 flights were delayed.
The airport advises all passengers to check its social media accounts like Facebook or Instagram to get updates on the situation.
The interruption, which hit on Wednesday night, continued yesterday with flights getting delayed at the KLIA main terminal.
Those flights were scheduled to take off for destinations in Japan, Australia, Singapore, China, Hong Kong, Indonesia, Bangladesh, India, Myanmar, Britain and Dubai as well as domestically, Penang, and Kuching and Sibu in Sarawak.
The disruption is to the Total Airport Management System (TAMS) at both terminals in KLIA. It affected flight display information and slowed down the check-in process among others.
KLIA has never seen such a widespread system glitch since its inception in June 1998.
KLIA2 was not as badly hit, according to a spokesperson of airport operator Malaysia Airports Holdings Bhd (MAHB). -/TISG