Transport minister Loke Siew Fook said MAHB’s report showed that the outage was caused by wiring and cables catching fire due to overheating.
Malaysia Airports Holdings Bhd has been ordered to conduct a full review of the electrical infrastructure at KLIA2 following yesterday’s blackout at the terminal.
Transport minister Loke Siew Fook said he told MAHB “to ensure that whatever happens, our operations will not be disrupted and power supply will always be guaranteed”.
Loke said MAHB had presented its report during a post-Cabinet meeting this evening, revealing that the blackout was caused by wiring and cables catching fire due to overheating.
“What is important is that we must ensure the backup system is activated immediately in any situation,” he said in a Facebook post.
The 28 minutes it took to restore electricity was “very long and difficult to accept”, he said.
Yesterday, he had called for a full report within 24 hours on the incident, which struck just as he arrived for an event at the terminal.
Loke said any disruption lasting more than 15 minutes in the public transport sector was considered a major incident, especially at the country’s main international gateway.
He said he had arrived 15 minutes early “as usual” but the event could not begin until 2.35pm because of a power outage that lasted almost 20 minutes. “What happened was unacceptable,” he said.
Some systems, such as the information boards, were functioning, many others had been affected, including escalators.
“Things like this can give our country a very bad image. The backup system should be working, but why was it not activated?” he asked.
MAHB said yesterday that essential systems, including backup generators, were activated immediately and that baggage handling, check-in counters and flight information displays were not affected.
It said power was fully restored within 28 minutes after its technical teams rerouted supply from an alternate substation.
