| Ten years ago in Kuala Lumpur, when you had to fly to a domestic destination, you traveled 30 minutes to Subang Airport, where you left from the 1954-style terminal where you had to go out on the tarmac in the rain and climb up a staircase to get on the plane.
Then, the government built a multi-billion ringgit global hub terminal 75 minutes away from KL with world-class everything. Then, they built a high-speed rail connection so it takes only 30 minutes to get there. Despite this, the global hub terminal remains a deserted ghost-town with far more gate capacity than flights.
AirAsia then starts up. Everyone can fly and the global hub terminal begins to come to life. So the government decides to build AirAsia a far, far away terminal at the other end of the airport, one that replicates the old 1954-style terminal. It doesn’t connect to the high-speed train.
Then, almost all domestic flights are shifted over to AirAsia.
So now you have to take a 75 minute bus ride to the far, far away terminal and walk out in the rain and climb the stairs just like back in 1954, while the global hub terminal is once again deserted.
Oh, and if you need to transfer from an overseas flight to a domestic flight, you have to take a half-an-hour bus ride from the global hub terminal to the far, far away terminal.
Is this back to the future or back to the past? Or is it just ‘terminal stupidity’? |
NEWS
