Monday 26 August 2013

KLIA besieged by delays

SEPANG: Flights in and out of the Kuala Lumpur International Airport (KLIA) were delayed while traffic leading out of the airport to Kuala Lumpur came to a standstill yesterday evening.

AirAsia X CEO Azran Osman-Rani tweeted at 4.27pm: “Significant delays today at KLIA due to air traffic control congestion and diversions to Subang and Penang. Changes to runways due to winds”.

A check on the Malaysia Airports flight information system website also showed many flights in and out of the airport had been delayed, re-timed or cancelled.

Twitter users also said there was a traffic standstill on roads out of KLIA due to a fatal accident involving a motorcycle and a Honda CRV.

At the airport arrival hall, rows of disgruntled passengers were seen waiting for the airport and city taxis, with their luggage in tow.

S.Y. Sim who arrived on a flight from Hong Kong said she was stuck at the airport for almost two hours as there were no taxis available due to the traffic congestion.

It took me more than an hour to get a taxi as there were several hundreds of people queuing, starting from the customs counter to the taxi ticketing counter,” she said.

She added that she was forced to pay three times the normal rate for a taxi-van although she was travelling alone.

In George Town, at the Penang International Airport in Bayan Lepas, world number one squash player Datuk Nicol David was among those whose flights were delayed.

David said she boarded a flight from Amsterdam on Saturday evening and was scheduled to arrive at KLIA at 3pm and in Penang from KLIA at 6pm yesterday.

However, we were told that the traffic at KLIA was busy,” she said when met at the Penang Interna-tional Airport upon her arrival there at about 10.30pm.

Malaysia Airports Holdings Bhd and Penang International Airport could not be reached for comment at press time.

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