Kota Kinabalu Airport
| Kota Kinabalu International Airport (KKIA) Lapangan Terbang Antarabangsa Kota Kinabalu |
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|---|---|
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| Characteristics | |
| ICAO code | WBKK |
| IATA code | BKI |
| Coordinates | |
| Height above MSL | 3 m (10 ft ) |
| Transport links | |
| Distance from the city center | 8 km south of Kota Kinabalu |
| Basic data | |
| opening | 1943 |
| operator | Malaysia Airports SDN BHD |
| surface | approx. 200 ha |
| Terminals | 2 |
| Passengers | 5,848,136 (2012) |
| Air freight | 23,563 t (2012) |
| Flight movements |
58,366 (2012) |
| Capacity ( PAX per year) |
about 5.5 million |
| Start-and runway | |
| 02/20 | 2987 m × 46 m asphalt |
Kota Kinabalu International Airport (KKIA) is the international airport of the Malaysian city of Kota Kinabalu , the capital of the state of Sabah on the island of Borneo .
During the Second World War , a military division of the Japanese armed forces built an airfield at the current location, around eight kilometers from the city center of Kota Kinabalu.
In 2006, the airport handled a total of around four million passengers in two terminal buildings, making it the second largest airport in Malaysia in this regard, after the airport in the capital Kuala Lumpur .
The main local airlines are Malaysia Airlines and AirAsia . In addition to a dense domestic route network, the two companies mentioned and also foreign airlines serve routes abroad.
history
During the invasion of Borneo , Japanese soldiers took the town of Kota Kinabalu, which was then called Jesselton . The Japanese occupying forces had an airfield built near the city with a 1,300-meter-long grass runway to set up a base for the Japanese air force in North Borneo. The airfield was badly damaged by Allied air raids with North American B-25 bombers towards the end of the Pacific War (July 17-19; July 23-25, 1945) .
After the Japanese surrender at the end of 1945, the Department of Civil Aviation (DCA) took over the operation of the airport.
Around twelve years later, KKIA received a new terminal building and a first asphalt runway, which two years later was extended by 300 meters to around 1.6 kilometers. This expansion made it possible to use Viscount aircraft from the Malaysian national airline Malaysia Airways , a predecessor of today's Malaysia Airlines .
In 1963 the runway was expanded to 1921 meters to allow larger Comet 4 aircraft to land in Kinabalu.
At the end of the 1960s, a British company was commissioned to draw up a master plan for the existing airport until 2000 and beyond. This plan, with the recommendation of extending the existing runway to accommodate aircraft up to the size of a Boeing 707 , was presented to the Malaysian government. The investigations also considered the construction of a new terminal building and the modernization of flight safety and navigation to be necessary.
While only around 33,500 passengers were handled at the beginning of the 1960s, by the end of the decade there were already over a quarter of a million passengers annually.
In the following decade, the new passenger building, today's Terminal 1 , was inaugurated. In the 1980 operating year, more than a million passengers were handled for the first time.
In 1992 the newly created Malaysian airport operating company Malaysia Airport Holdings Berhad took over the operation of the airport. In the years that followed, Terminal 1 was expanded and renovated several times, including installing five passenger boarding bridges and increasing the annual passenger capacity to 2.5 million.
In 2006 a major expansion program began that affected the entire airport. In the course of this expansion, the Malaysian Prime Minister Dato 'Seri Abdullah bin Ahmad Badawi handed over the completely renovated old terminal building to the public under the new name Terminal 2 on January 1, 2007 .
The cost of the expansion program amounts to around 1.2 billion Malaysian ringgit (250 million euros); the construction work should be completed by April 2009.
Airport grounds
The approximately 200 hectare airport area extends along the only runway and measures around 3300 by 500 meters in its north-south extension. It is limited by dense housing developments in the east and the coast in the west. During the last extension of the railway line, a small landfill was made into the sea at the southern end. A parallel running taxiway ( taxiway ) consists of a length of 1.5 kilometers east of the slope and is to be expanded in the near future their full length.
The old handling building (Terminal 2) is located halfway west of the runway, while the new Terminal 1 is located on the southeastern edge of the airport site.
The apron in front of the old passenger building offers space for up to six (before the expansion only four) narrow-body aircraft , such as the Airbus A320 of the local low - cost airline AirAsia . These four parking positions are designed in such a way that aircraft come to a stop at an inclined position and can get back onto the taxiway in a turning circle without push-back aids. This enables a further reduction in airport charges for low-cost airlines. Next to Terminal 2 there are two hangars which, like the apron, are connected to the main runway by two shared taxiways.
The runway in the south is connected to the main runway, is much larger and can accommodate up to seven narrow- body aircraft and one wide-body aircraft , such as B. a Boeing 747 , record at the same time. There is also space for another five fan guns. Narrow-body aircraft can be serviced in two hangars.
Dense housing estates border the airport area on almost all sides. Therefore, an area-wise expansion can only take place in the direction of the sea.
Passenger terminal building
Terminal 1
The terminal 1 , the larger of the two terminal building, is located on the south-eastern edge of the airport. Up to 2.5 million passengers annually can be handled in the multi-storey building. Incoming passengers are handled on the lowest level, departing passengers on the level above. There is a road access on both levels. The traffic is threaded into the road network of Petagas near Kepayan.
The existing building does not contain any special architectural elements. It is equipped with four passenger boarding bridges to ensure that the aircraft can be processed quickly.
The building is currently undergoing a massive expansion that will last until 2008. In this context, the northern end of the building will be converted and tailored to the requirements of narrow-body aircraft, while six parking positions for turboprop aircraft will also be built close to the building . The most important expansion, however, is the construction of a completely new terminal building with a pier in front. These will be connected to the existing part at a slight angle, so that Terminal 1 can handle nine million passengers per year after the construction work is completed and a total of over twelve aircraft parking positions with passenger bridges close to the building disposes. Five of these parking positions are designed for wide-body aircraft, some even for the Airbus A380 , which Malaysia Airlines will occasionally use to Kota Kinabalu.
The construction costs for the extension of Terminal 1 amount to around 700 million Malaysian ringgits (around 120 million euros). The construction is carried out by the Malaysian construction company WTC Engineering Berhad .
Like the existing building, the architecture of the new facilities is by no means based on the culture of the local Orang Asli , the indigenous people of Borneo. The new departure hall consists of a steel and glass construction and is being built with a curved roof.
Terminal 2
The Terminal 2 has been in existence since 1957, but was closed in the meantime and was inaugurated in January 2007 after a major renovation and expansion by the Malaysian Prime Minister. Construction work was completed 27 months ahead of schedule. However, it was converted into a freight terminal on December 1, 2015 due to limited capacity. All flight operations have been moved to Terminal 1.
Although the modern building is often referred to as the Low Cost Carrier Terminal , the facilities were not specifically tailored to low-cost airlines .
The passenger building was equipped with 26 check-in counters , 13 immigration counters and seven baggage claim belts . The annual passenger capacity after the latest expansion was three million passengers. Before that, only half a million passengers could be handled each year.
The low- cost airline AirAsia was the main user of Terminal 2.
Start-and runway
The only runway is also affected by the current expansion program. In 2007, construction work began to extend the only runway from 2988 to 3780 meters. In the course of this extension, the poor district of Sri Tanjung on the coast, behind the southern airport fence, will be cleared and land will be backfilled into the South China Sea .
The aim of the runway extension is to enable the world's largest passenger aircraft, the Airbus 380, to land in Kota Kinabalu. The Malaysian national airline Malaysia Airlines has ordered six copies of this aircraft, and the use to Borneo seems likely - at least occasionally - to be.
The construction of a second runway is unlikely because of the surrounding buildings and would be very costly if further land was filled into the sea.
Airlines and destinations
Kota Kinabalu is an important hub for the two major Malaysian airlines Malaysia Airlines and AirAsia . They serve a dense route network domestically (on the Malay Peninsula as well as in East Malaysia) and also several routes abroad. The race track to the Malaysian capital Kuala Lumpur on the Malaysian mainland is served ten times a day by Malaysia Airlines and nine times by AirAsia flights. This route is the busiest on site.
The low-cost airline AirAsia operates international flights to China, the Philippines and Taiwan from Kota Kinabalu.
The regional airline FlyAsianXpress (FAX), a subsidiary of AirAsia, has become another local top dog after Malaysia Airlines took over the regional routes in Borneo. All routes were taken over on August 1st by MASWings , a subsidiary of Malaysia Airlines. Any losses incurred on these routes will be borne by the Malaysian government.
The only non-Asian airline that served KKIA was Australian Airlines , a subsidiary of Qantas, Australia .
The Sabah government is constantly looking for new destinations and new airlines.
Web links
- A – Z Word Airports
- Website of the airport operator Malaysia Airports
- Annual report 2012 of the airport operator Malaysia Airports (PDF; 15.4 MB)
Individual evidence
- ↑ Website of the airport operator
- ↑ Annual Report 2012: “Passenger Movements”; Page 306
- ↑ Annual Report 2012: “Cargo Movements”; Page 321
- ↑ Annual Report 2012: “Aircraft Movements”; Page 320
- ↑ Chronology of the USAAF
- ↑ DCA Malaysia Region II: Passengers Movement ( Memento of the original of July 11, 2012 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was automatically inserted and not yet checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. ; Accessed September 14, 2012
- ↑ Terminal 2 KKIA Ready for Operation ; Accessed September 14, 2012
- ^ Aviation News - Bernama
- ↑ WTC Engineering Berhad - website of the construction company ( Memento of the original of September 27, 2007 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was automatically inserted and not yet checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.
