Malaysia’s long-delayed Aerotrain at Kuala Lumpur International Airport (KLIA) has suffered fresh embarrassment after experiencing two service disruptions within three days, just a week after its US$100 million relaunch and a test ride by Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim.
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The most recent incident occurred on Friday morning, when a flooded tunnel forced Malaysia Airports Holdings Berhad (MAHB) to temporarily halt the 1.2km (0.75 miles) rail service linking the main terminal to its international satellite gates.
MAHB blamed pump failure during heavy rainfall for the flooding, saying the line was shut “as a safety precaution” while workers manually cleared the water.
Train operations resumed after about 90 minutes, but not before irate passengers were again shepherded onto shuttle buses – a frustrating return to arrangements that had been in place since the Aerotrain service was suspended in early 2023.
The outage triggered criticism from Malaysia’s vocal social media users, who shared photos of their experiences taking buses to travel between terminals.
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“I expected it, but so soon?” Ashish Kale wrote in a post from the airport bus terminal.