Malaysia Airport Opens--Barely

Check-in computers stopped, luggage and flights were delayed for hours and escalators ground to a halt last week as Malaysia opened its $2.3 billion Kuala Lumpur International Airport, touted as the world’s biggest and most modern.

The opening days provided fuel for critics, who had complained about the airport’s location (40 miles from downtown Kuala Lumpur) and its reliance on the world’s first “total airport management system,” which links all operations to a central computer.

“The system is down. They didn’t expect this to happen,” a harried official told hundreds of angry travelers. Khairuddin Ibrahim, the airport’s managing director, described the glitches as “teething pains.”