Kota Kinabalu Airports

This afternoon I went to the airport to pick up a colleague coming in from Tawau. It gave me another opportunity to take some photos and also to use the panorama feature on the Lumix FZ35.

The original airport (60s and 70s) was near the Tanjung Aru Beach. In fact it is opposite the new park covered in my post on The Tanjung Aru Beach Area. After the new airport was built on the other side of the runway, this "old" airport was used by the Sabah Flying Club and others.



When the "Low-Cost" airline (Air Asia) started, the old terminal was renovated and was named Terminal 2 (all Air Asia flights land here). If your connecting flight is on Malaysian Airline System (MAS), then you have the "fun" of transporting yourself (and luggage) to Terminal 1.

The new airport (called Kota Kinabalu International Airport - KKIA) was constructed on the other side of the new extended runway. In 2005, the construction to expand the KKIA by about 3 X in size and further extend the runway was started. The "new" extension portion was completed in 2008. While all the flight services used the new extension, the "old" KKIA was demolished and rebuilt. It is near completion. This whole complex is called KKIA Terminal 1.

KKIA Terminal 1 ("new" extension portion)

KKIA Terminal 1 (Rebuilt "Old" portion)

Due to the proposed extension of the runway, the pony race-track at one end of the runway was demolished. I went to one of the remaining structure on the race-track grounds to take a series of photos using the panorama feature of the Lumix FZ35. These were then stitched together using the software supplied by Lumix.

The stables area, the admin building with the race-track beyond

This end of the runway, the KKIA Terminal 1 is center-left (far distance), Terminal 2 is to the center-right. The small building on the right is the "sport club" associated with the Pony Racing Club. It is basically a slot-machine joint.

KKIA Terminal 1 (it's clearer here what I was talking about in the earlier paragraph) with the rebuilt "old" KKIA Terminal on the right and the "new" extension center-left.

The panorama feature was very simple to use and the software automatically stitched together the series of photos taken (the last one above from 4 photos). The software even removed most of the distortion due to the changing angle of each photo.