Kuala Lumpur International Airport (KLIA) has issued an official apology for the temporary pause in Aerotrain operations this morning.
In a post on X this evening, KLIA explained that the 15-minute delay was caused by a door malfunction, and shuttle buses were deployed during that time to maintain connectivity.
“Services resumed at 11.01am and operations are now back to normal. Thank you for your patience,” it said on its official @KLIA_my account.
X user @afiqmukhtar had highlighted the service disruption at 10.52am, asking why the Aerotrain had “broken down again”.
“Millions (spent for) repairs but it still cannot hold passengers to capacity. What is this?” he said, also tagging Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim, transport minister Loke Siew Fook, and Malaysia Airports Holdings Bhd (MAHB) in his post.
MCA Youth secretary-general Saw Yee Fung later called on the transport ministry to set up a special task force to investigate the true cause of the service’s problems.
“According to news reports, the driverless train’s services returned to operations after undergoing upgrading work worth RM456 million, with its operations having been suspended for 28 months.
“Nevertheless, its repeated disruptions within the past month are disappointing and unacceptable,” she said.
On July 2, Facebook user Ahmad Ramadzan Soid posted that one of the trains had broken down, while other netizens said a passenger had caused the train’s door to jam.
On July 4, travel blogger CK Ng posted that the trains were not in service, with passengers being transported to the airport’s satellite terminal by bus instead.
MAHB explained that the lack of service on July 4 was due to one of the drainage pumps experiencing a technical fault amid heavy rainfall, preventing the automatic removal of accumulated water.
Loke attributed the rainwater issue to the airport’s legacy facilities, and denied the problem was in the Aerotrain’s design.
“The incident was neither caused by any weakness in the new Aerotrain system itself, nor because the train ‘cannot withstand heavy rain’ as some quarters have suggested.
“When the pump failed to operate as designed, rainwater accumulated in the tunnel and reached a safety threshold, automatically activating the Aerotrain’s safety systems to suspend operations as a precaution,” he said.
Loke said the two incidents “demonstrate the integrity and reliability of the new Aerotrain’s safety systems”, and that the new Aerotrain assets are “built to meet international standards and are operating well”.
The new Aerotrain services began on July 1, involving three trains with a maximum capacity of 270 passengers each.
