SEPANG: Malaysia Airports Holdings Bhd has issued a formal directive to contractors involved in the Aerotrain service to take immediate corrective action.
The airport operator said the directive was issued to Alstom and IJMC-Pestech Joint Venture (IPJV) to following the latest incident involving the service at Kuala Lumpur International Airport.
It said preliminary assessments had indicated a declining trend in the reliability of the system, particularly affecting vehicle operations and power distribution components.
Despite receiving operational data and assurances from the contractors, MAHB said the information provided had not been sufficient to restore confidence in the Aerotrain’s current performance levels.
“As such, we have made the decision to implement a comprehensive action plan. The plan will be led by our project team with full involvement of the contractors and project consultants, and in collaboration with an independent technical assessor,” MAHB said in a statement today.
The action plan is now being finalised with the involvement of Land Public Transport Agency (Apad) and the Transport Ministry.
As part of immediate measures, MAHB will deploy full shuttle-bus services between 11pm and 5am daily to facilitate scheduled and additional inspection works.
Between 5am and 11pm, shuttle buses will run concurrently alongside the Aerotrain to ensure uninterrupted passenger movement between terminals.
“Malaysia Airports is ready to mobilise extensive resources to provide full shuttle-bus services according to the needs of the action plan,” it said.
Since service resumed in July 2025, the Aerotrain service has carried more than 6.55 million passengers and completed nearly 95,000 trips.
Yesterday Transport Minister Anthony Loke said his ministry would take punitive measures including a hefty fine of RM250,000 to MAHB for each disruption, if investigations showed the failures was resulted from MAHB and the designated contractors.
So far, there have been at least 21 incidents including the recent incident early Tuesday.
Loke had also said that not all of the disruption were technical faults, as some were caused by humans, namely passergers trying to hold the train doora open.
MAHB reiterated that passenger safety and comfort remained its top priority and said it was committed to restoring full reliability of the system.
The Aerotrain system at KLIA has faced public scrutiny in recent years due to repeated breakdowns and service disruptions.
The service was suspended for most of 2023 as part of a replacement project, during which shuttle buses were used to ferry passengers.
The phased resumption last year was aimed at restoring full capacity ahead of further upgrades.
MAHB said it would continue to provide updates as rectification work progresses.
© New Straits Times Press (M) Bhd
