Malaysia's airport operator said Monday a low-cost air terminal expected to be among the largest in the world will be delayed until mid-2012 and cost at least $150 million more than originally planned. The airport was initially due to be completed by late 2011 but has been delayed by slow progress with building the runway and by design changes that include making the terminal bigger and more secure than originally planned, Malaysia Airports Holdings said. The design changes also pushed up the cost of the new terminal, located 2 kilometers west of the main Kuala Lumpur International Airport, above its billion ringgit ($635 million) budget, said Bashir Ahmad, managing director of Malaysia Airports. The final cost could be higher than 2.5 billion ringgit ($794 million), Bashir said but declined to give details. The terminal building is targeted to be completed by April 2012 but the runway won't be ready for two to three months after that due to a delay in earthworks, he was quoted as saying by the Associated Press. Prime Minister Najib Razak, at a ground-breaking ceremony for the terminal, said it would help Malaysia achieve its goal of boosting tourism revenue by more than threefold to 168 billion ringgit by 2020, from 53 billion ringgit last year. The new budget terminal, dubbed «KLIA 2», will have an initial capacity to handle 30 million passengers a year, which can be expanded to 45 million people, as well as 70 aircraft parking bays and 6,000 car parks. It will connect with existing airport infrastructure and the main terminal building at KLIA. A showpiece of the KLIA2 will be the pedestrian sky bridge, the first in Asia, that will link the two terminal buildings for international and domestic arrivals respectively, Malaysia Airports said. An express train line from the city to the main airport will also be extended to the new terminal. Air Asia, the region's largest no-frills airline by fleet size, has said a bigger terminal is crucial to its survival with passenger traffic slated to reach 30 million and its fleet to grow to 184 planes by 2013.
