Jeddah’s new upgraded King Abdulaziz International Airport is scheduled to open for full operations in mid-2017, according to the General Authority for Cival Aviation (GACA).
Construction on the airport and testing of all equipment will be completed by the end of 2016, said Sulaiman Al-Hamdan, GACA’s director general and chairman of Saudi Arabian Airlines, Â Arab News reported.
Al Hamdan laid the foundation stone for a new Saudi building in the support area next to the airport’s new building on Thursday.
Saleh Al-Jasser, directer general of Saudi, said the SAR350m Saudi facility would also be ready by mid-2017, as part of the strategic program that includes fleet development, expansion of its flight network and installation of the latest information technology.Â
Saudi hopes to increase the number of flights from 500 to 1,000-a-day, which would give the airport one of the highest airline operations in the world, Al-Jasser added.Â
The airport expansion will help the Kingdom increase its passengers from 28 million to 45 million by 2020, a goal that has been set by the GACA’s operational plan.Â
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