Faster clearance for cabin crew
AMEMORABLE travelling experience begins well before a passenger boards his flight. Many factors play an important role including airlines operations. The wellbeing and ease of the airline cabin crew is also important, allowing the crew more time to re-energise and stay focused on their tasks.
At the second terminal of the Kuala Lumpur International Airport or klia2, care has been taken to allow cabin crew a smoother and faster clearance process.
The new Crew Processing Centre (CPC), which is conveniently located next to klia2, was opened on July 1 to specifically serve the cabin crew and usher them out from the crowds of travellers at the terminal.
Built at a cost of RM2.7 million by Malaysia Airports Holdings Bhd (MAHB), the centre allows a stress-free and shorter travelling time for the cabin crew to get to the departure gate, especially during the peak hours.
So far, the CPC handles approximately 1,000 users from AirAsia daily.
Crew members of AirAsia do not have to walk far or worry about the humid weather or getting soaked in the rain as the CPC is directly linked to the AirAsia’s RedQuarters (RedQ) via covered walkways.
The ease of process at the CPC gives them peace of mind to prepare for their flight, and joining the masses during the immigration clearance is now a thing of the past.
Under the latest process, the CPC allows for better immigration processes, enabling Immigration personnel to effectively screen the cabin crew before take-off.
klia2 terminal manager Shaiful Abdul Rahman said the CPC is a tri
partite collaboration between MAHB, the Royal Malaysian Customs and the Immigration Department to facilitate the AirAsia crew members’ movements.
“There was a need for a more effective process.”
He said an overall projection of the time saved for a faster turnaround is at least by 40 per cent, thus allowing AirAsia to maintain its OnTime Performance stellar record and making it a preferred airline of choice.
Besides having improved security, the airlines could also offer more routes and flight frequencies to passengers due to the shorter turnaround time.
“By having CPC, the flow of travelling for cabin crew has changed,” he said.
Previously, it took about 13 to 32 minutes for domestic crew to clear the processes and get to the departure gates. However, the process now takes about seven to 11 minutes.
For international crew members, they previously needed 16 to 20 minutes to reach the gates before CPC was built. Currently this has been reduced to between 10 and 15 minutes.
Shaiful said for daily operations, the cabin crew would first report for duty at RedQ.
Those given a nod to travel would then proceed to the airport’s Security Control Post 2 which is adjacent to the CPC.
MAHB senior executive aviation security Noor Zaidah Noor Salleh said at this juncture, international crew members need to bring the General Declaration document containing their names.
“Before the CPC was built, cabin crew members would use the same security checkpoint to get to the airside like the rest of the other airport staff. The heavy usage would have caused congestion and slower processing time. Hence, we have now separated the process to give this added convenience to our partner airline. Malaysia Airports has even put in extra manpower resources for this purpose to ensure that the process remains smooth,” he said.
“Although convenience and faster processing time are our focus, we do not compromise on security. The tight security at the security post utilises fingerprints as a biometric indicator. The crew would also be subjected to a thorough body inspection and their luggages scanned,” she said.
Noor Zaidah said as part of its security features, highly-trained security personnel would be vigilant against any suspicious behaviour via profiling and look out for explosives and flammable materials. Banned items like sharp objects would be confiscated immediately.
“The Smiths Detection scanner would detect weapons, dangerous devices, explosives as well as their components,” she said.
“If we detect any possible explosives, the standard operating procedure would be activated and the police would be rushed in to handle the case,” she said adding that the crew would also be quarantined.
MAHB has dedicated 10 to 12 newly recruited aviation security personnel to work on three shifts round the clock and they would also be subjected to scrutiny and rotation.
With this new facility in place, cabin crew can now head straight to the CPC and personnel from the airlines would be on standby to check on their own crew to divide them into two categories.
The crew would leave via two doors, one for domestic crews and another one for international crews based on their manifests.
The domestic crew would wait for a van at the holding lounge to ferry them to the domestic flights’ gates.
Meanwhile, the international crew would go through an immigration clearance and would be further screened for customs’ clearance.
Royal Malaysian Customs Department customs superintendent Muhammad Aiman Mat Shukri said customs officers working in three shifts would look for prohibited items like drugs.
The crew at this area would then wait at a holding lounge for the van to ferry them to the departure gates.
The CPC also recently underwent an Operational Readiness and Airport Transfer (ORAT) exercise twice with actual simulation tests based on real scenarios in June, a month before its official opening.