This article first appeared in The Edge Malaysia Weekly on April 21, 2025 - April 27, 2025

MALAYSIA Airports Holdings Bhd (MAHB) is deep in its preparation for Visit Malaysia 2026 in anticipation of a likely increase in passenger traffic during the year.

“The three main focus areas that we’re looking at right now are aviation growth, service and capacity,” MAHB senior general manager of strategy Megat Ardian Wira Mohd Aminuddin tells The Edge on the sidelines of the recent Routes Asia 2025 conference in Perth, Australia.

Aviation growth, he says, comes down to getting the right aircraft from the right airlines and flying the right routes that can provide volume and quality in terms of passengers — being those who not only enter the airport, but also visit other parts of the country for business and leisure.

Last year, MAHB expanded its network with 12 new airlines, all of which are operating out of the Kuala Lumpur International Airport. System-wide, there are 73 foreign and six local carriers operating flights in Malaysia’s airport network. This year, the airport operator is aiming to exceed 2024’s number of new airlines as it prepares for Visit Malaysia 2026.

“We’re always pushing the team to get more [airlines]. New airlines always make headlines, but what is important as well are the volume and increased frequency,” says Megat.

“For example, for a wide-body aircraft that carries 250 to 300 passengers, if we can add new frequencies, it immediately doubles the volume of passengers for the airline. Meanwhile, a new narrow-body aircraft that comes in once a day will only give you 150 passengers. That’s why we are looking at increasing both new airlines and frequencies of existing airlines.”

When it comes to new airlines, he says MAHB is targeting long-haul carriers from Europe, from both the oneworld alliance as well as those that are not part of the group.

In terms of China’s growing market, its strategy includes both new airlines and increasing the frequencies of current airlines that fly to Malaysia.

“The strategy for China and part of the Asean market is a ‘hunting versus farming’ strategy, where we not only hunt for new airlines but also make the best of the current airlines by sharing with them data on underserved routes and entice them with incentives from MAHB to see how they can grow the volume,” says Megat.

Another market that MAHB is actively working on is India. Similar to the Australian market, from where many Malaysian carriers fly into the country, there are many other routes where Indian carriers do not currently exercise their bilateral traffic rights, he points out.

“This is where we’re working together with the government. It is a G2G (government-to-government) initiative as well. We are working very closely with the airlines for them to exercise their traffic rights. At the same time, to also see whether Malaysia’s [traffic] rights can be increased,” says Megat.

With the potential influx of passengers as a result of having more airlines operating in Malaysia, MAHB is also focusing on service, that is, ensuring that service at its airports is in “tip-top” condition.

“I’m referring to operational efficiencies. So, this is where from kerb to gate, we have various touchpoints which we are looking at on how we can optimise efficiencies. We’re looking at both decongesting terminals and also unleashing capacity,” he says.

“For example, it would be an objective for a terminal to have a passenger spend the least amount of time from the kerbside all the way to his or her first cup of coffee. It is a very emotionally driven journey for the average passenger [at airports]. They don’t like queues and they don’t like a lot of wait time at immigration. They don’t like the anxiety of having to queue at the check-in counter, immigration and then at the boarding gate.”

At the same time, MAHB — which was taken private in February following a takeover by Gateway Development Alliance Sdn Bhd (GDA), a consortium comprising Khazanah Nasional Bhd, the Employees Provident Fund, the Abu Dhabi Investment Authority and BlackRock’s Global Infrastructure Partners — is looking at the most efficient way to reduce the waiting time for passengers. One of the ways is to identify choke points, for example, at security checkpoints where centralised security screening takes place.

Besides operational efficiencies, the service aspect also includes MAHB’s commercial offerings to passengers, its duty-free and retail experience, as well as the ambience at the airport. The airport operator plans to put in new retail outlets and have its new offerings and improved ambience ready by the end of this year.

Where capacity is concerned, MAHB is looking to optimise its existing airport infrastructure to accommodate the growing passenger volume.

“We have a master plan for KLIA as well as a master plan for some of our other airports. But these master plans were done right before Covid-19 hit, in 2020. So, we will have to review the projections [for any increase in capacity]. The projections start from discussions with airlines to see where the demand is coming from and the types of aircraft that are coming in for the airlines,” says Megat.

The KLIA Master Plan, which was rolled out in 2020 when Covid-19 hit, included phased upgrades for Terminal 1 (T1) and Terminal 2 (T2). T1’s capacity was to be increased from 30 million to 59 million passengers per year, while T2’s capacity was to go from 45 million to 67 million passengers per year. The plan included the development of a fourth runway and a new T3 in the future.

“From the projections, we can then determine when we would need to build another terminal. In parallel, we optimise whatever we can at the airport [to increase capacity]. So, it is a work in progress,” he says. 

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