Ian Weepers recently wrote this interesting report from his visit to Kota Kinabalu Airport serving Borneo and eastern Malaysia.
Kota Kinabalu is the main airport serving the Sabah province of Borneo. The airport has two terminals, Terminal One is used predominately by Malaysian Airlines, there is no viewing area landside, but once you are airside, you get good views of all parked aircraft. I positioned myself in the area between Gates B4 and B5; from here you can read off any landing traffic on Runway 20. MAS have a maintenance hangar here, and you can get a good view into the hangar from Gate B3. Terminal Two is used solely by AirAsia, once again there are no views landside. On the left hand side of the terminal is the Cargo area, during the day Transmile have their B727 and B737 parked here, also parked in this area during my visit, were helicopters involved in transporting personal to the nearby oil rigs.
On the right hand side of the terminal, is an area where you can get reasonable photographs of aircraft parked in front of the terminal and also aircraft taxiing to the holding point of runway 02. From this point you can walk past the Sabah Flying club, the only aircraft noted here during my visit was 9M-LLI GAF Nomad, walking through the car park and bearing right you will find a track that takes you past the Sabah Air Aviation hangar, about 100 metres along from here on the left is the Malaysian Police hanger, 9M-PSQ C208 was noted on most of my visits.

After passing the police hanger you can follow the road down to the local viewing area, from here you get views of aircraft parked at Terminal One and have good views of the runway and aircraft taxiing to the holding point of runway 02, but unless you have an air conditioned car I don`t think you could last long here as the heat and humidity are oppressive.
We stayed at The Tanjung Aru Resort & Spa during our visit and it took about 40 minutes to walk along the adjacent beach to the viewing area
mentioned above.

A selection of aircraft noted during 13/03-25/03.

A319…9V-SBH, RP-C3193, RP-C3196, V8-RBR.
A320… 9M-AFO,AFR,AHC,AHD,AH I,AH J,AHO,AHQ,AHS,AHV,AHZ,AQA,B, V8-RBS,RBT.
AS350/5…9M-LLV, 9M-PHK.
ATR 72…9M-MWA,MWB,MWC,MWD,MWE,MWF,MWG,MWH,MWI,MWJ.
B350…9M-PTB.
B727F…9M-TGB,TGG, TGH.
B737F..9M-PMW.
B737NG…9M-FFA, FFB, 9M-MXA, MXB, HL8204.
B777…V8-BLB.BLC.BLD,BLF.
DHC6…9M-MDK, MDL,
EC225…9M-AIT.
LJ45…VH-PFS.
S76…9M-AIK.
S92…9M-AIH.

With thanks to Ian Weepers.

Have you been to any unusual airports? Can you write a report for us to post? Get in touch if so!

Kuala Lumpur International Airport is to open a new Low Cost Carrier (LCC) terminal in October 2012, which will see a capacity of up to 15 million passengers per year.

The airport only opened its existing LCC terminal in 2006, mainly to cater for the growing number of low cost airline flights by carriers such as Air Asia, who are very big in the country.

Now, to cope with demand, the new terminal – dubbed KLIA2 – will be built to offer more room for expansion and greater comfort for passengers. It will be situated opposite the main terminal.

Once open, the existing LCC terminal will be given over to use as a cargo terminal.

Kuala Lumpur’s modern new airport (KLIA) luckily provides very acceptable facilities for spotting aircraft.

In the International Terminal, follow signs for the viewing area, which is upstairs past the food court.

The large room overlooks most of the parking areas, and has views extending to both runways. It is surrounded by glass, but is usually acceptable for photography. There are seats and departures/arrivals boards provided.

You can see across to the pier, but not beyond it, which makes it difficult to see anything parked on the maintenance or cargo ramps. These can, however, be seen if you are in the remote pier departure areas.