The General Authority of Civil Aviation (GACA) is rethinking the time permitted for vehicles to drop-off and pick-up passengers at Jeddah's King Abdul Aziz International Airport and also considering lowering parking prices at the terminals. Khaled Al-Khaybari of GACA's Public Relations Department said that Prince Fahd Bin Abdullah, Assistant Minister of Defense and Aviation for Civil Aviation Affairs, had ordered a relook at the situation, and that the GACA was “working to solve the problem” while avoiding impeding traffic flow in the vicinity of the terminals. “The conclusions of the study will be released within the next ten days,” Al-Khaybari said Saturday. A second study, he added, was looking at the feasibility of lowering parking prices. Saudi Arabian Airlines, meanwhile, has sent a safety and maintenance team to Cairo to assess an engine failure in a chartered Boeing 747 that occurred while it was on the runway at Cairo airport on Saturday morning. The aircraft was preparing to return to Jeddah with 22 passengers, all crew staff. “The investigation will reveal the cause of the failure,” said Waleed Al-Uloumi, Saudia's assistant head of public relations. “The aircraft had flown from Jeddah with 300 passengers aboard and arrived safely in Cairo. The failure occurred as it prepared for the return journey.”
