AIRPORT HAD LONGEST RUNWAY
Subang Airport, officially opened in 1965, replaced the Sungai Besi Airport
BEFORE the Kuala Lumpur International Airport (KLIA) in Sepang welcomed travellers in 1998, Subang International Airport, dubbed Subang Airport back then, had long established itself as the entry point to Malaysia.
Costing a princely sum of RM52 million then, it was built on 535 hectares of land after the government decided in 1960 that the country needed a new airport.
Situated 19km from the capital city of Kuala Lumpur, the airport was officially opened to flights on Aug 30, 1965, by the then Yang di-Pertuan Agong Tuanku Syed Putra ibni Almarhum Syed Hassan Jamalullail.
The official unveiling ceremony was witnessed by more than 1,500 guests.
The airport also took pride in having the longest runway in Southeast Asia, 3.5km in length and 45m in width, and replaced the Sungai Besi Airport or Sempang Airport located in the heart of Kuala Lumpur.
By the 1990s, the airport had three terminals, namely Terminal One for international flights, Terminal Two for SingaporeKuala Lumpur shuttle flights catering to Singapore Airlines and Malaysia Airlines, and Terminal Three for domestic flights.
In 1996, it was renamed after the then Sultan of Selangor Sultan Salahuddin Abdul Aziz Shah Al-Haj, who was also the 11th Yang di-Pertuan Agong.
By end of 1997, the airport recorded a passenger traffic growth of 15.8 million.
In a report by the New Straits Times in 1998 titled “Goodbye Subang airport, hello KLIA”, the airport’s first manager, J.D. Desmond Lee, said the airport was “very modern and wellplanned” then.
He said that although there wasn’t much air traffic then, the momentum grew and by the late 1960s, the airport was bustling with travellers.
In 1980, the expansion of Terminal One began. However, the work initially went rather slowly, much to the annoyance of the then prime minister Datuk Seri (now Tun) Dr Mahathir Mohamad.
To speed things up, he directed that Terminal Two be extended to cope with the entire airport operations, leaving Terminal One completely free for renovation work.
The spanking new Terminal One, covering more than 823 sq m, reopened on June 1, 1983, and was greeted with much excitement.
The newly refurbished terminal featured “ultra-modern” features, namely a baggage trolley conveyor, nose-in parking apron for aircraft, 12 aerobridges, dutyfree shops and walkalators.
By the end of 1997, Subang Airport had handled 15.8 million passengers before its role as the nation’s main exit and entry point for air travellers was taken over by KLIA.
Subang Airport continues to be operational on a smaller scale and is currently the hub for Berjaya Air, Malindo Air and Firefly commercial turboprop services. Transmile Air Services is the only other non-passenger non-turboprop aircraft landing there and uses Terminal Two of the airport.
Several notable incidents took place at the airport. In August 1983, a 17-year-old stowaway penetrated security at Terminal Two by hiding himself in a food caterer’s lorry.
He sneaked aboard an aircraft parked in a hangar, which subsequently flew to Penang.
He was discovered in the toilet before the aircraft left Penang on a haj flight for Jeddah.
In December the same year, Malaysia Airlines Flight MH684 from Kuching, with 247 passengers, including 14 crewmembers, crashed into a swamp in Kampung Melayu Subang, 1km from the runway.
Moments after the crash, the aircraft burst into flames, but not before its passengers managed to scramble to safety.
In November 1988, the Air France Concorde landed in Malaysia for the first time. The sleek, delta-winged supersonic aircraft, with 96 passengers and nine crewmembers, was on a chartered world tour.
The Concorde, from Guam, flew at an average speed of more than 1,600kph but decelerated to sub-sonic speeds of below 1,120kph when it entered Malaysian airspace.
In April 1992, a fire broke out in the airport, killing three security guards from the Civil Aviation Department and damaging 29 duty-free shops. The loss was estimated at between RM20 million and RM30 million. The cause of the fire was faulty wiring carried out by unqualified and unregistered electrical contractors.
Six months later, a fire broke out in the control tower, destroying the radar, computers and other equipment worth more than RM2 million.
Former assistant air traffic controller Johari Saaid, 41, was charged with causing the fire and sentenced to 10 years’ jail.