THE Kuala Lumpur International Airport is poised to join the ranks of the Top 20 busiest airports in the world by 2020. It will need to move up at least seven spots from its current 27th rank over the next seven years.

The signs all point positively to that direction as analysts begin to see the airport’s full potential coming to bloom in the next decade.

KLIA has always been a winner in its own right. It has won several awards, including “best airport in the world” in its category, ever since it opened its doors back in June 1998.

It was one of the biggest construction projects ever carried out in the country, with up to 25,000 workers working non-stop daily over seven years to complete it. And we were proud that it truly stood out in the international map as an iconic airport in terms of its futuristic design and capacity for future expansion.

The former agricultural land in Sepang was transformed into one of the world’s largest airport sites and KLIA took its rightful place as one of the major international airports in the region, even though some of the toughest challengers in competing for traffic are from the region itself.

Analysts are now even more upbeat about KLIA because they believe the whole economic make-up of Kuala Lumpur, and by extension, our country, has changed.

As one aviation expert puts it, “there is strong economic growth, more foreign companies are based here than a decade ago, the number of business travellers is higher and there is a huge domestic market and Malaysia is more visible on the tourism map”.

Although there had been setbacks previously when some major airlines decided to bypass KLIA, any airline that seeks to be a global player today cannot overlook the attractiveness of our airport.

We have the connectivity, traffic volume, a thriving domestic market and we are also home to Asia’s biggest low-cost airline hub.

But while the analysts can crunch the numbers and look at the trending statistics, the success of KLIA is also directly linked to our overall performance as a nation.

For example, if we want to be a top-notch tourist destination, we must strive to make our international gateway the initial point of entry for the majority of tourists travelling to this part of the world.

While we can benefit from being one of the stops along the way, it is better to be the first stop.

And if we want to attract more business travellers, we must continue in our efforts to make Kuala Lumpur the city of choice for global companies setting up regional headquarters.

In this respect, our country must continue to be a model of political stability, business friendliness and environmental awareness, among others, to make people want to fly into our country, thereby guaranteeing KLIA’s success.

It is not an easy task. But it is not impossible either. Given the right attitude and proper planning, we can really soar for the skies. Come the next decade we should be aiming beyond the Top 20, to be right there at the very top.

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