KUALA LUMPUR (Aug 26): Malaysia Airports Holdings Bhd (MAHB) says it is not ruling out possibility that the recent network failure at the Kuala Lumpur International Airport (KLIA) was caused by an act of malicious intent.

It added that the authorities have launched an investigation into the matter.

MAHB group CEO Raja Azmi Raja Nazuddin said the network is stabilising well.

"Despite the network disruption (since Aug 21), we wish to reassure the public that the security aspects at the airport has remained intact. This was possible due to the close cooperation given by the Department of Immigration Malaysia and the Royal Malaysia Police," he said in a statement today.

"While we have extended all possible assistance to the airlines during this period, the same level of assistance, cooperation and understanding was also given to us by the airlines. We would like to take this opportunity to once again express our sincere gratitude to our airline and agency stakeholders for coming together and providing the best fallback solutions," he added.
 
The technical outage is the first major complaint at KLIA since it opened in June 1998. The previous disruption to operations was due to power failure in September 2003, causing a total blackout and delays of six flights.

MAHB shares closed down seven sen or 0.81% to settle at RM8.56 today, giving it a market capitalisation of RM14.2 billion. It saw 1.83 million shares traded.