Syed Hamid inspecting city taxis lined up at the KLIA waiting bay in Sepang.

SEPANG: City taxis will be allowed to pick up passengers from the KL International Airport (KLIA) starting tomorrow.

This is part of a new taxi service system at the KLIA aimed at reducing the waiting time for passengers to under 10 minutes, said Land Public Transport Commission (SPAD) chairman Tan Sri Syed Hamid Albar.

The introduction of the two-tier service system involving airport limousines and city taxis was also prompted by a demand for budget taxis, which made up about 74% of all taxi demands at KLIA, he said.

However, Syed Hamid said not all city taxis would be allowed to pick up passengers from KLIA, so as to maintain a hospitable image of Malaysia to tourists.

“We want only high-quality city cabs that are in good condition, spacious and operated by drivers with good conduct,” he said, adding that the same two-tier model would be implemented at the upcoming KLIA2.

“The city taxis will operate from Level One of the KLIA main terminal building and passengers will be charged according to the meter. The airport limousines, which will charge according to a zone coupon system, will operate from Level Three of the same building,” said Syed Hamid.

As part of a queue management measure, passengers will be required to buy a RM2 coupon before they can join the queue to hire a metered city cab from the airport.

Taxi marshals will check the coupons at the door and assign passengers to the taxi bays accordingly.

The move to include city taxis comes following complaints of long queues for airport limousines at the airport, which receives about 9.3 million passengers yearly and has 4,000 to 5,000 taxi trips daily.

Previously, budget city taxis could only send passengers to KLIA but were not allowed to pick up people at the arrival hall due to the exclusivity provided to premium taxi concessionaire Airport Limo (Malaysia) Sdn Bhd.

“We would like to remind taxi drivers against overcharging as those found guilty can be fined up to RM500,000 or even be jailed. We may also suspend or terminate the licence of errant taxi drivers,” said Syed Hamid.

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