After a series of delays, Qatar’s new international airport is scheduled to fully open in the second half of 2013.

Originally known as New Doha International airport, it was renamed Hamad International airport in January 2013.

The airport will cater to 12 airlines from 1 April, but Qatar’s national carrier, Qatar Airways, will not transfer all its traffic to the new location until the second half of the year.

Hamad International will play a key role in supporting Qatar Airways’ expansion plans. Passenger traffic at the current Doha airport has been increasing by about 14 per cent a year.

Once complete, the airport will feature two of the longest runways in the world, an 85-metre-high control tower and a 510,000-square-metre passenger terminal with 40 gates. The NDIA Steering Committee was set up to manage the project.

Hamad International airport is built on a 22-square-kilometre site, just a few kilometres east of the city’s existing airport. Initial work included the reclamation of 62 million cubic metres of land to create the site.

The project is being developed in three phases. Once work is completed in the second half of 2013, the facility will provide capacity for 28 million passengers a year, a significant increase on the existing airport’s annual capacity of 4.2 million passengers.

US firm Bechtel has been overseeing the project, after winning the engineering, procurement, construction and management contract in 2005. The Sky Oryx joint venture of Turkey’s TAV Construction and Japan’s Taisei was awarded construction contracts for the main terminal building and concourses A, B and C in early 2006.

Hamad International airport has been blighted by a string of delays and contract cancellations since its launch in 2004. In 2008, its schedule was pushed back by two years, bringing its target completion date to 2011.

In 2010, China State Construction Engineering had its building contract for the airport terminated. The deal had covered the construction of 20 buildings, including a general aviation terminal and hangar.

A revised completion date of 12 December 2012 was set, but was missed again, due in part to an ongoing legal battle between Qatar Airways and German/UAE joint-venture construction firm Lindner Depa Interiors (LDI).

LDI is accused of failing to complete the fitout of 19 airport lounges by the summer of 2012, as demanded under its $250m-plus contract. Qatar Airways issued a lawsuit against the company at the end of last year for causing delays to the airport project.