Kuwait’s Directorate General for Civil Aviation (DGCA) has invited firms to bid by 28 February for the contract to operate and manage the new passenger terminal, called Terminal 4, at the Kuwait International airport.

Companies that have been invited to bid for the contract include:

• Changi Airports International (Singapore)
• Aeroports de Paris Management (France)
• TAV Airports Holding (Turkey)
• Munich Airport International (Germany)
• Fraport AG (Germany)

It is understood the facility to be operated by the selected contractor is the new passenger terminal building, which was initially planned as a temporary facility.

MEED earlier reported that the standard operational readiness and airport transfer (Orat) process for the terminal, which has a design capacity to handle up to 4.5 million passengers, was underway.

Under the initial plan, the facility was to augment the capacity of the existing terminal at the airport until the $4.3bn Terminal 2 becomes operational. However, recent developments indicate the new passenger terminal will now likely to be converted into a permanent facility.

A team comprising Turkey’s Cengiz Insaat Sanayi Ve Ticaret and the local First Kuwaiti General Trading & Contracting Company won the KD52.8m ($174m) contract for the construction and maintenance of the temporary passenger terminal in August 2016.

In addition to the existing terminal and the new T4, Jazeera Airways’ $46.3m dedicated terminal is expected to come online in the first half of 2018.

This means Kuwait International airport will be operating four terminals by end of the year, inclusive of the Sheikh Saad al-Abdallah terminal, a small business aviation terminal built in 2008, which Flydubai has been utilising for all Kuwait-bound flights since 2013.

The $4.3bn Terminal 2 is also expected to be completed between 2020 and 2022. Terminal 2 has a design capacity of 25 million passengers annually and will replace the existing terminal, which has been operating beyond capacity for several years.

Kuwait International processed 13.7 million passengers in 2017, a rise of 17.1 per cent over the figure reported in 2016.This volume of passenger traffic is nearly three times the design capacity of the existing main passenger terminal at the airport.