LANGKAWI, 18 Feb 2018:
All tourists left stranded after the Langkawi SkyCab cable car here broke down late this afternoon have arrived safely at the base station at Oriental Village here tonight.
Panorama Langkawi Sdn Bhd, the operator of the Langkawi SkyCab cable car system, managed to rectify the malfunction just before 11pm – to begin bringing down a total of 960 tourists and 78 staff from the 708m Mount Machinchang summit to the base station.
Langkawi Development Authority (LADA) chief executive officer Datuk Azizan Noordin said 89 tourists who arrived at the base station about 9.30pm were those stranded inside the cable cars when the system failure occurred at 5.48pm.
He said the technical teams of Panorama Langkawi Sdn Bhd, a LADA subsidiary and operator of the cable car system, had to resort to manual efforts to mobilise the system to bring the cable cars down to the base station.
“A 12-man technical team accompanied by two fire and rescue department personnel is already up at the middle station to replace a faulty bearing in the system, which had been the cause of the system to break down.”
Azizan said as of 10pm, about 200 tourists were still stranded at the middle station – which is located about 650m above sea level and another 300 at the upper station, about 708m.
“InsyaAllah, once the restoration works had been carried out, the remainder could be brought down to the base station… hopefully, before midnight,” he had said earlier.
On the condition of the tourists who had arrived at the base station, he said there was one who had fainted but had regained consciousness before being brought to the Langkawi Hospital for observation.
“The rest were okay but tired, while some appeared to be a bit traumatised after being stranded inside a stalled cable car and hanging few hundred metres high for a couple of hours, but we are doing our best to comfort them and provide the necessary assistances.”
Azizan said the service would cease tomorrow to enable a thorough investigation into the incident – the cable car system would be halted for half day to enable maintenance and service works to be carried out.
“The operation will only resume after noon when we are satisfied.”
– Bernama