Kuala Lumpur International Airport (KLIA) is Malaysia’s main international airport. It is located in the Sepang District of Selangor, approximately 45 kilometres (28 mi) south of Kuala Lumpur and serves the city’s greater conurbation.
KLIA is the largest and busiest airport in Malaysia. In 2020, it handled 13,156,363 passengers, 505,184 tonnes of cargo and 124,529 aircraft movements. It is the world’s 23rd-busiest airport by total passenger traffic.
The airport is operated by Malaysia Airports (MAHB) Sepang Sdn Bhd and is the major hub of Malaysia Airlines, MASkargo, Batik Air Malaysia, UPS Airlines and World Cargo Airlines, and the major operating base of AirAsia and AirAsia X.
The airport’s site spans 100 square kilometres (39 sqm) of former agricultural land and is one of the world’s largest airport sites. An ambitious three-phase development plan anticipates KLIA to have three runways and two terminals each with two satellite terminals. Phase One involved the construction of the main terminal and one satellite terminal, giving a capacity of 25 million passengers, and two full-service runways. The Phase One airport had sixty contact piers, twenty remote parking bays with eighty aircraft parking positions, four maintenance hangars and fire stations. Phase Two, designed to increase capacity to 35 million passengers per year is largely complete. Phase Three is anticipated to increase capacity to 100 million passengers per year.
The ground breaking ceremony for Kuala Lumpur International Airport (KLIA) took place on 1 June 1993[2] when the government under Tun Dr Mahathir decided that the existing Kuala Lumpur airport, then known as Subang International Airport (now Sultan Abdul Aziz Shah Airport) could not handle future demand. The construction of the airport was done mainly by a few state owned construction companies as well as Ekovest Berhad. It was created as part of the Multimedia Super Corridor, a grand development plan for Malaysia. The chief architect who designed the new airport terminal was the Japanese architect Kisho Kurokawa.
Upon KLIA’s completion, Subang Airport’s Terminal 1 building was demolished. Malaysia Airports agreed to redevelop the remaining Terminal 3 to create a specialist airport for turboprop and charter planes surrounded by a residential area and a business park. The IATA airport code KUL was transferred from Subang Airport, which currently handles only turboprop aircraft, general aviation and military aircraft.
The airport’s site spans 100 square kilometres (39 sq m) 2 of former agricultural land and is one of the world’s largest airport sites. An ambitious three-phase development plan anticipates KLIA to have three runways and two terminals each with two satellite terminals. Phase One involved the construction of the main terminal and one satellite terminal, giving a capacity of 25 million passengers, and two full-service runways. The Phase One airport had sixty contact piers, twenty remote parking bays with eighty aircraft parking positions, four maintenance hangars and fire stations. Phase Two, designed to increase capacity to 35 million passengers per year is largely complete. Phase Three is anticipated to increase capacity to 100 million passengers per year.