style="text-transform: uppercase;">Kota Kinabalu: Further expansion of the Kota Kinabalu International Airport (KKIA) apron and terminal are on the cards. Malaysia Airports Holdings Bhd (MAHB) Managing Director Datuk Badlisham Ghazali (pic) said 10 more overnight aircraft parking bays are being planned to cater to jets and turboprop aircraft with construction of these facilities expected to commence this year.

This will come along with the company's plans to increase terminal capacity from nine million to 16million passengers over the next five years.

"MAHB wants to be ahead of the curve to cater to the eight per cent growth in travel in the Asia Pacific Region.

"There are plans to continuously upgrade this airport to the kind of growth that we (MAHB) see and start discussions on the capability of upgrades for this airport.

"This is only for night stops and to cater to possibilities whether airlines want to increase flights to KKIA.

But this depends on how aggressive the airlines are in time to come," he said.

Badlisham is here to check on the efficiency and effectiveness of KKIA and other airports in Sabah.

He said construction of the additional overnight aircraft parking bays is expected to cost "anywhere from RM60 million to RM80 million."

KKIA currently has 22 parking bays, with 13 bays being used at any one time and up to 20 bays during peak periods, mostly by local airlines.

"That allows more aircraft to make night stops. So we look forward for more airlines making stops here and make Kota Kinabalu a hub to serve the eastern Asia side of Malaysia and attraction of Sabah," he said.

He noted this will augur well with more airlines recently launching new flights from the city to various cities in Asia, including Tiger Airways from Taiwan, which is set to begin flights to KKIA on March 18.

Terminal I handled 6.6 million passengers last year but the number is expected to increase given that travel increased 8 per cent annually in the Asia Pacific region.

All airline operations have been carried out from Terminal I since Dec. 1 last year when AirAsia finally submitted to its notice order to relocate from Terminal II following Prime Minister Datuk Seri Najib Tun Razak's intervention over the low budget airline's spat with MAHB to move there.

Terminal II became overcrowded when AirAsia was still operating there with the airport's two million capacity seeing over three million passengers going through it.

According to Badlisham, since then check-in time for passengers have now been halved from 10 minutes to five minutes at present.

"That's the benefit of consolidating all facilities into Terminal I here especially passengers.

"And passengers certainly now see the difference and this is the kind of impression, we want to leave behind to our visitors," said Badlisham, adding that various services also improved from the consolidation significantly, including immigration counters and taxi services.

Retail outlets also benefitted from the consolidation, said Badlisham, adding 13 more retailers will open soon on top of the 46 retailers, including the 14 from Terminal II previously.