Malaysia Airports Holdings Bhd (MAHB) has successfully conducted a business continuity exercise for the Kuala Lumpur International Airport (KLIA).

The simulation exercise which took place on Friday 31st October is believed to be the first and largest of its kind for an airport in the Asia Pacific region. It was focused on recovery activities in the event of inaccessibility of the key passenger terminal.

Malaysia Airports' managing director Datuk Seri Bashir Ahmad said that business continuity exercise was to test the capability and coordination of all parties who had been operating in the key passenger terminal to transfer their operations to an alternate terminal in the event of a catastrophic incident at the airport.

About 600 participants, including six major airlines and eight airport agencies, were involved in the exercise which lasted for four hours from 11pm to 3am.

"Prior to this exercise, Malaysia Airports has conducted numerous business continuity workshops and the most recent was conducted on October 23rd which was attended by about 100 participants," Bashir said.

"The workshops were designed to exercise the response, recovery and normalisation activities following a disaster that results in the closure of the main terminal for several weeks," he said.

Bashir said although the exercise was not compulsory under any civil aviation requirement, Malaysia Airports would continue to organise such exercises in the future with different scenarios to meet the dynamic environment of the airport.

"We also have plans to extend this exercise to other airports in Malaysia," he said.

•Date: 4th Nov 2008• Region: Asia Pacific •Type: Article •Topic: BC testing
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