The operations and infrastructure of Kuala Lumpur International Airport reflect its design.
Facilities
Design
The concept of KLIA's terminal building area was prepared by the late Japanese architect Kisho Kurokawa. The terminal building area was designed using the concept of Airport in the forest, forest in the airport, in which it is surrounded by green space. This was done with the co-operation of the Forest Research Institute of Malaysia. An entire section of rain forest was transplanted from the jungle and put in the satellite building.
The airport is designed to handle up to 100 million passengers per year. It has colour-coded signage in Malay, English, Chinese, Japanese and Arabic and an automated people mover and travelators to allow easy movement in the airport.
The runways and buildings cover an area of 100 square kilometres. With its 75 ramp stands, it is capable of handling 120 aircraft movements at a time. There are 216 check-in counters, arranged in six check-in aisles. The airport is the first in the world to use the Total Airport Management Systems (TAMS).
Air traffic control tower
There are two air traffic control towers at Kuala Lumpur International Airport: the main control tower and apron control tower. Tower West is 133.8 metres tall and is the tallest air traffic control tower in the world, followed by Suvarnabhumi Airport's control tower and KLIA's Terminal West. Shaped like an Olympic torch, it houses the air traffic control systems and radar equipment.
The 55 metre apron control tower is responsible for the provision of Air Traffic Service to aircraft and vehicles movement in the northern and southern parts of the Satellite Terminal building and the cargo apron areas.
Runways
KLIA has three parallel runways, 14L/32R, 14R/32L and 15/33, all three of which are over long and wide. The length of Runways 14R/32L and 15/33 is while Runway 14L/32R is long. Each runway also has 10 taxiways exit with the taxi time ranging from 2 minutes to 11 minutes. The two full-service runways can handle 120 movements per hour when one runway handles taking off and one runway handles landing. Each runway is also equipped with one completely parallel taxiway with a second parallel taxiway. Unlike airports in temperate countries which often have low visibility as low as that requires higher Instrument Landing System category to guide landing of an aircraft, the airport has CAT II Precision Landing ILS to guide landing aircraft safely under all weather conditions with visibility as low as . The runways at KLIA are able to accommodate the Airbus A380. Future expansion of the KLIA Master Plan includes the addition of another two runways. The new KLIA2 expansion which was completed in May 2014 was followed by the opening of the new runway 15/33, before which the airport had only two runways.
Baggage handling system
The airport's baggage handling system (BHS) features baggage common check-in at any of the 216 counters on a 24-hour basis and incorporates automatic bar-code sorting control, 4 level in-line baggage security screening and high speed conveyor belts.
The BHS was built by Toyo Kanetsu and in 2006 a contract to extend the system from the satellite building to the ERL (Express Rail Link) platform in the Main Terminal Building was awarded to Siemens. The new system from Siemens will transport baggage between the two terminals at speeds of up to 36 km per hour, compared to the previous rate of 7.2 km per hour. The new system uses a high-speed tray conveyor system in which bags are placed on individual trays for better control and tracking at high speed compared to conventional belt conveyors enables the baggage to be checked-out in KL Sentral once the operator of KLIA Express, ERL Berhad introduce the new facility.
Baggage is handled by two companies, Malaysia Airlines and Kuala Lumpur Airport Services (KLAS). The Malaysia Airlines System handles most airlines landing at KLIA whereas KLAS also handles the remaining airlines.
IATA had agreed to facilitate the usage of RFID tags between KL International Airport and Hong Kong Airport after the launch of the world's smallest multiband RFID chip in Kuala Lumpur. KLIA will be the second airport to use RFID
The RFID baggage tagging trial between Kuala Lumpur International Airport and Hong Kong International Airport is completed. Baggage tags are being issued at both Malaysia Airlines and Cathay Pacific check-in counters. The trial was delayed due to problems obtaining printers. Furthermore, KLIA is now awaiting reports from IATA which scheduled to be released first quarter of 2008.