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Kuala Lumpur International Airport (KLIA) (IATA: KUL, ICAO: WMKK) is Malaysia's main international airport. It is located in the Sepang District of Selangor, approximately 45 kilometres (28 mi) south of Kuala Lumpur and serves the city's greater conurbation.

KLIA is the largest and busiest airport in Malaysia. In 2020, it handled 13,156,363 passengers, 505,184 tonnes of cargo and 124,529 aircraft movements. It is the world's 23rdbusiest airport by total passenger traffic.

The airport is operated by Malaysia Airports (MAHB) Sepang Sdn Bhd and is the major hub of Malaysia Airlines, MASkargo, Batik Air Malaysia, UPS Airlines and World Cargo Airlines, and the major operating base of AirAsia and AirAsia X.

Background
The ground breaking ceremony for Kuala Lumpur International Airport (KLIA) took place on 1 June 1993 when the government under Tun Dr Mahathir decided that the existing Kuala Lumpur airport, then known as Subang International Airport (now Sultan Abdul Aziz Shah Airport) could not handle future demand. The construction of the airport was done mainly by a few state owned construction companies as well as Ekovest Berhad – helmed by Tan Sri Datuk Lim Kang Hoo. It was created as part of the Multimedia Super Corridor, a grand development plan for Malaysia. The chief architect who designed the new airport terminal was the Japanese architect Kisho Kurokawa.

Upon KLIA's completion, Subang Airport's Terminal 1 building was demolished. Malaysia Airports agreed to redevelop the remaining Terminal 3 to create a specialist airport for turboprop and charter planes surrounded by a residential area and a business park. The IATA airport code KUL was transferred from Subang Airport, which currently handles only turboprop aircraft, general aviation and military aircraft.

Current site
The airport's site spans 100 square kilometres (39 sq mi) 2 of former agricultural land and is one of the world's largest airport sites. An ambitious threephase development plan anticipates KLIA to have three runways and two terminals each with two satellite terminals. Phase One involved the construction of the main terminal and one satellite terminal, giving a capacity of 25 million passengers, and two full service runways. The Phase One airport had sixty contact piers, twenty remote parking bays with eighty aircraft parking positions, four maintenance hangars and fire stations. Phase Two, designed to increase capacity to 35 million passengers per year is largely complete. Phase Three is anticipated to increase capacity to 100 million passengers per year.

Grand opening
Kuala Lumpur International Airport was officially inaugurated by the tenth Yang diPertuan Agong, Tuanku Ja'afar of Negeri Sembilan, on 27 June 1998 at 20:30 MST. The first domestic arrival was Malaysia Airlines flight MH1263 from Kuantan at 07:10 MST. The first international arrival was Malaysia Airlines flight MH188 from Malé at 07:30 MST. The first domestic departure was Malaysia Airlines flight MH1432 to Langkawi at 07:20 MST; the first international departure was Malaysia Airlines flight MH84 to Beijing at 09:00 MST.

Inauguration
The inauguration of the airport was marked with numerous problems. The aerobridge and bay allocation systems broke down, with queues building up throughout the airport and the baggage handling breaking down. Bags were lost, and there were waits of over five to seven hours. Most of these issues were remedied eventually, though the baggage handling system was plagued with problems until it was put up for a complete replacement tender in 2007.

The airport suffered greatly reduced traffic with the general reduction in economic activity brought about by the 1997 Asian financial crisis, September 11 attacks, SARS, bird flu epidemic (Avian flu), the financial crisis of 2007–2008, the 2009 swine flu pandemic and the COVID19 pandemic. The airport is also largely overshadowed by the more internationally renowned Changi Airport located approximately 300 kilometres (190 mi) to the south in Singapore, especially in regards to connecting flights by various airlines or Malaysians especially living in the southern parts of the country (e.g. Johor) preferring to travel via Changi rather than at KLIA.

The first year of opening immediately saw reduction of passenger numbers as some airlines, including All Nippon Airways (resumed on 1 September 2015), British Airways (reinstated on 28 May 2015 until 28 March 2021[9]), Lufthansa (resumed between 28 March 2004[10] until 28 February 2016) and Northwest Airlines, terminated their lossmaking services to KLIA. KLIA's first full year of operations in 1999, in its Phase One manifestation (capacity of 25 million passengers per year), saw only 13.2 million passengers.

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