Kuala Lumpur International Airport (KLIA; ) is the main international airport of Malaysia. Despite its name, it is not located within Kuala Lumpur, but rather in the Sepang District of Selangor, approximately south of the city, serving its greater conurbation. KLIA is the largest and busiest airport in the country and a regional megahub for low-cost carriers in Asia-Pacific. In 2025, it handled 63.3 million passengers, ranking as the 20th-busiest airport by total passenger traffic.
AirAsia is the dominant air carrier in Malaysia, based in KLIA Terminal 2 and serving 14,583 low-cost connections, with a 35% share of flights, followed by Malaysia Airlines. 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 operating base for AirAsia and AirAsia X.
In 2024, KLIA was ranked first by OAG (by ratio of connection flight frequency to destinations served) in the Global Low-Cost Megahubs index by 11,188 possible low-cost connections across over 137 destinations. OAG also ranked KLIA as the world's second most connected airport (by ratio of connection flight frequency to destinations served) in 2024, with 33,411 possible connections, according to the OAG Megahub Index, second to London–Heathrow and followed by Tokyo–Haneda, Amsterdam and Seoul–Incheon in the top five.
History Background The groundbreaking ceremony for Kuala Lumpur International Airport (KLIA) took place on 1 June 1993 when the government under Mahathir Mohamad 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 – helmed by Tan Sri Datuk Lim Kang Hoo. 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 handled limited low-cost airline service, turboprops, aircraft maintenance, repair and operations (MRO), general aviation and military aircraft after the switch, and recently resumed its own jets operation in 2024.
Current site The airport's site spans 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 60 contact piers, 20 remote parking bays with 80 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.
Inauguration Kuala Lumpur International Airport was officially inaugurated by the tenth Yang di-Pertuan Agong, Tuanku Ja'afar of Negeri Sembilan, on 27 June 1998, shortly before the 1998 Commonwealth Games.
The inauguration of the airport was marked with numerous problems. The aerobridge and bay allocation systems broke down, with queues building up throughout the airport and baggage handling failing. Bags were lost, and there were waits of over five to seven hours. Most of these issues were remedied eventually, though the baggage handling system was plagued with problems until it was put up for a complete replacement tender in 2007.
The airport suffered greatly reduced traffic with the general reduction in economic activity brought about by the 1997 Asian financial crisis, September 11 attacks, SARS, bird flu epidemic (Avian flu), the 2008 financial crisis, the 2009 swine flu pandemic and the COVID-19 pandemic. The airport is also largely overshadowed by the more internationally renowned Changi Airport located approximately to the southeast in Singapore, due to a lack of connecting flights served by the airports, especially to European aviation hubs.
The first year of opening immediately saw reduction of passenger numbers as some airlines, including All Nippon Airways (resumed on 1 September 2015), British Airways (reinstated on 28 May 2015 until 28 March 2021, and again since April 2025), Lufthansa (resumed between 28 March 2004 until 28 February 2016 and returning on 25 October 2026) discontinued their flights. Qantas moved their Sydney-Kuala Lumpur route to its low-cost subsidiary Jetstar, which continued to operate the route until 2008. Aeroflot terminated their Moscow-Kuala Lumpur via Singapore route in 2001, although there had been discussions about Aeroflot resuming the Kuala Lumpur route, no progress was made, and Northwest Airlines terminated their loss-making route from Osaka to Kuala Lumpur in 2001. KLIA's first full year of operations in 1999, in its Phase One manifestation (capacity of 25 million passengers per year), saw only 13.2 million passengers. Passenger numbers eventually increased to 21.1 million in 2004 and 47 million in 2013 — though short of the originally estimated 25 million passengers per year in the first phase between 1999 until 2008.
Rebranding On 9 February 2023, transport minister Anthony Loke Siew Fook announced that the government and MAHB had agreed to rebrand KLIA and klia2 to KLIA Terminal 1 and KLIA Terminal 2 respectively. The costs associated with the rebranding will be fully borne by MAHB.
Runways
Kuala Lumpur International Airport has three parallel runways (14L/32R; 14R/32L; 15/33For KLIA2, arrivals for can only use 32L while departures can only use 14R), all three of which are over long and wide. The length of Runway 14L/32R is , runway 14R/32L is , while runway 15/33 is .
The current three runway system is capable of handling 78 landings per hour and was expected to increase to 108 landings per hour once upgrading of the Kuala Lumpur Flight Information Region had been completed in 2019. The airport has CAT II Precision Landing ILS (runways 14L/32R and 14R/32L) to guide landing aircraft safely under all weather conditions with visibility as low as whilst runway 15/33 has CAT I Precision Landing ILS that guide safe landings under all situations with lowest possible visibility at . These runways operate on different departure/arrival modes according to the air traffic requirements.
Operations and infrastructure Kuala Lumpur International Airport features a number of modern design features that assist in the efficient operation of the airport. It is one of the first Asia Pacific airports to become 100% Bar Coded Boarding Pass capable. Malaysia Airlines; AirAsia; MASkargo, a cargo airline; and Malaysia Airports, the Malaysian Airports operator and manager; are headquartered on the property of KLIA. Malaysia Airlines also operates its Flight Management Building at KLIA.
Air traffic control tower
There are three air traffic control towers at Kuala Lumpur International Airport: the two main control towers (Tower East and Tower West) and the apron control tower. Tower East is the original control tower which has stood since the airport's opening. It is 130 metres tall and controls the traffic of the initial two runways. Tower West is 133.8 metres tall and is the tallest air traffic control tower in the world, followed by those at Suvarnabhumi Airport and King Abdulaziz International Airport. Each tower is shaped like an Olympic torch, and they house the air traffic control systems and radar equipment.
The 55-metre apron control tower is responsible for providing air traffic service to aircraft and vehicle movement in the northern and southern parts of the Satellite Terminal building and the cargo apron areas.
Baggage handling system
The airport's baggage handling system (BHS) features baggage common check-in at any of the 216 counters on a 24-hour basis and incorporates automatic bar-code sorting control, four level in-line baggage security screening and high speed conveyor belts.
The BHS was built by Toyo Kanetsu with lots of new mechanism such as Belt Carry Sorter, Triplanar, Hinged Diverter, Horizontal Sliding Belt Diverter, and FOD (foreign object debris) Detection System. In 2006, a contract to extend the system from the satellite building to the ERL (Express Rail Link) platform in the Main Terminal Building was awarded to Siemens. The new system from Siemens will transport baggage between the two terminals at speeds of up to 36 km per hour, compared to the previous rate of 7.2 km per hour. The new system uses a high-speed tray conveyor system in which bags are placed on individual trays for better control and tracking at high speed compared to conventional belt conveyors enables the baggage to be checked-out in KL Sentral once the operator of KLIA Express, ERL Berhad introduce the new facility.
Facilities of the baggage handling system in Terminal 1 include: Eight short-term car park baggage check-in counters Eight bus and train stations baggage check-in counters Three stage baggage security screening system Early check-in baggage storage (1,200 bags capacity) 17 baggage reclaim carousels together with LCCT 33 km total length of conveyor belts Part of the belts travel through a 1.1 km tunnel from the Main Terminal Building to the Satellite Building.
Meanwhile, in Terminal 2, the baggage handling system being implemented by BCS Group from Norway and upgraded by Daifuku Airport Technologies From Japan until its opening in May 2014, costing RM 60 million. The BHS in Terminal 2 is as follows: 128 check-ins Over 10 km in aggregate length for over 1,200 conveyors Over 2 km in aggregate length for 21 carousels CCTV system for the complete baggage system Two High speed tilt tray sorters 14 inline screening X-ray machines on the conventional baggage system plus 5 for the out of gauge lines 250 barcode readers EBS infrastructure for early bags
Several companies handle the baggage systems in KLIA. For the homebase airlines, Malaysia Airlines operates the BHS through AeroDarat Services, AirAsia uses Ground Team Red, and Malindo has their own baggage crews. There are also two more baggage handlers operate under Kuala Lumpur Airport System (KLAS) which are Pos Aviation and ProSky Services.
IATA had agreed to facilitate the usage of RFID tags between KLIA and Hong Kong International Airport after the launch of the world's smallest multiband RFID chip in Kuala Lumpur. KLIA will be the second airport to use RFID. The RFID baggage tagging trial between KLIA and Hong Kong International Airport is completed. Baggage tags are being issued at both Malaysia Airlines and Cathay Pacific check-in counters. The trial was delayed due to problems obtaining printers. Furthermore, KLIA is now awaiting reports from IATA which scheduled to be released first quarter of 2008.