About 30 million passengers have traveled through King Abdulaziz International Airport (KAIA) in Jeddah in 2015, which is an increase of 6.6 percent over the previous year. "This is the largest number of passengers in all the Kingdom's airports," the airport's director Abdullah Al-Rimi said. He said since its inception, the airport has been witnessing an increasing number of air traffic movement which is three times its actual capacity. Rimi referred the large number of passengers using the airport to the increasing number of Haj and Umrah pilgrims, tourism and economic activities. "The air transport companies operating to and from the airport have gone up from 64 to 80 last year. They reach 100 companies during the Haj and Umrah seasons," he said. The director said the continuous rise in the air traffic and the increasing number of passengers represent a grave challenge to the airport in its transitional period before the shift to the new airport. "We have a big responsibility to provide excellent services to the passengers and to all airline companies using the airport," he said. Rimi said, when it is formally opened, the new airport will satisfy the needs of the air transport market in the Kingdom. "The new airport will be a quantum leap in air travel industry in the region and will enable the Kingdom to compete with the world in the domain of airport and passenger service," he said. The General Authority for Civil Aviation (GACA) has said the upgraded airport will become fully operational by the middle of 2017. The first phase of the project will be completed by the end of 2016 and will start receiving flights in the last quarter of 2017, according to officials. With the completion of the first phase, which includes a terminal complex spreading over an area of 720,000 square meters, 46 gates for international and domestic flights, and 94 air bridges to serve aircraft of different sizes, the airport will have the capacity to handle 30 million passengers a year.
