KLIA Kuala Lumpur Airport

The low cost terminal at Malaysia's national gateway is less than 18 months old, and it sure leaves an impression, though none too flattering as a whole. Arriving on AirAsia from Pattaya the arrival gate was possibly the most distant point from immigration, in the order of 2km. The arrival level was spacious, airy, and modern and was a breeze to go through. As I'd arranged for pickup I had no opportunity to check the other transportation options. Departure 4 days later was another story. The AirAsia check-in was chaotic with minimal signage. Security was efficient and barely any effort in contrast to other reports of draconian measures. The real shocker was entrance to departure wing "L". The aisles are incredibly narrow and congestion was at every gate, with queues overlapping and no room for other passengers to pass to more distant gates. The space in this wing is also quite dark, with few windows and relatively low ceilings. Food service for this entire wing of 18 gates was a single stall with 7 tables, 6 menu items, 2 that were sold out. The bare, flat-white painted walls were already filthy with dark spots behind each of the seats that could accommodate maybe 20% of the passengers. Remember, this is a national gateway, not yet 18 months old and it already appears dingy, dirty, and worn.

Coming into Kuala Lumpur Airport was great, missing some signs but otherwise fast and easy to manover. Departing it was a whole different experience. Check-in was incredibly slow, went smoothly through security (we thought). Easy to take the train to c-terminals. There it was hard to find what you were looking for, it's a wierd lay out and lacking information. going to the gate you have to go through yet another security check where they're very thorough and will take everything, even stuff bought at the terminal. Had bought some water for the flight which I had to through out even though it was sealed and I had a reciept. So whatever you do, don't buy any liquids at this airport, felt bad for the people who had bought more expensive stuff than water. The staff working in security were very rude and not helpful. Avoid this place if you can.

Generally a nice and comfortable airport. It is far from the city center - the KLIA train to "KL Sentral" will take aorund half an hour and cheapr than a taxi for one person. Overall it's good airport with many facilities.

KLIA 2 is a new airport and it was excellent. For a low cost carrier airport, it was surprisingly good. Duty free shopping, restaurants and cafes are very good, many options available and shops are not too expensive. I spent 8 hours there and had a good time. Overall, for a low cost carrier airport, it is excellent.

Arrived on an evening flight from Tokyo. I had to wait for over an hour for my bag to arrive. This was not the first time with this airport. I seriously think the management should really do something about this.

Kuala Lumpur (KLIA) is one of good airports thanks to all the available facilities. I traveled several times through this airport and found airport staff to be very helpful, and the immigration process took less than 10 mins.

First and foremost it was nice to land at such a spacious airport, meaning this is one airport you will never feel over crowded, but you might as well think you have just landed somewhere that is too big for its actual occupancy, the airport is too far out of central KL, meaning you have leave plenty of road (no train options) time to get to your terminal. Service related issues I found were mainly around the food court, most servers are more content to talk amongst themselves than serve customers. Vendors, some accepted foreign currency some did not, most tables in the food court wee full of previous customers trash. Food court was modern with all of the usual outlets available. Only one other place to purchase drinks in the food court, serviced by skeleton staff, not really interested in serving any customers, I found it hard to buy a drink of any kind, I ended up just going to one of the many burger joints to make my purchase. Toilets, yes there are plenty available here, however each one smells. Cleaning equipment left out unattended in eye sight. Receptical over flowing, filthy floors and counter tops, I had to keep reminding my self I'm not in Singapore anymore, Malaysia please take some notes. Not very well managed or maintained in any capacity. Customs, going through the X-ray machines is quick and easy, I found the staff friendly, although their staffing for these areas is over the top, 10+ staff to each machine is over kill most staff stand around talking, in the way of passengers.

KLIA2 is a poor airport. The design necessitates long walks. Services are inconsistent. Most days there's a buggy service for the upper part of the walk. Today we waited more than half an hour but no buggy for passengers appeared. However there was a buggy ferrying staff with wheelchairs (to fetch passengers). Their attitude is: for passengers not our business.

I have flown into KLIA from Heathrow on average every two years since it opened in 1998, to visit family, with some regional/internal flights in-between. It is a well-presented and apparently well-maintained airport with reasonable functionality and transport links. I will focus on the truly negative aspect for this review as it needs highlighting: queuing at Immigration Control. This applies to both arriving and departing passengers, and the latter seems quite unique to KLIA. Upon arrival at KLIA, it is quite normal to join a queue for foreign passports that will last some 20 minutes or more. There doesn't seem to be much in the way of passenger-flow monitoring and accommodating peak periods. When going through ticket presentation from check-in to security, at KLIA there is a row of Immigration desks for passport/biometrics capture. My experiences over the last 17 years have shown this to be a very quiet area, so I was particularly surprised at the queues that I had to join last Wednesday (24th). I don't know if there was a unique event or incident that contributed to this, but everything seemed normal to that point. My queue lasted 20 minutes, and was the quicker queue as an extra desk opened up towards the end. Up to that point, there were three desks out of 7+ open for foreign passports, with an extra two for "First and Business Class" that did not call over any passengers to alleviate the queue when they were not serving anyone. That aside, it was the usual positive experience, if unspectacular. But the queuing desperately needs addressing.

Airport layout is horrible. Immigration was quick when I arrived. Officer was pleasant. For departure, went through countless security checkpoints. Some staff rude, others refused to accept the smartphone Airasia app boarding pass. At the entrance to Departures one staff member said "go to checkin counter and get a boarding pass". His colleague looked at the smartphone and asked me "is it a screenprint" then I had to reload the app to show him it wasnt. Security staff at the bag check and metal detectors had poor attitude.