Originally known as New Doha International airport, Hamad International opened for passenger services on 30 April 2014.

The airport can handle 30 million passengers a year. This will increase to 50-60 million once a planned expansion has been completed.

The airport cost about $17bn to develop. It has 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 construction suffered significant and costly delays. Its original opening date of 2008 was revised several times, and a soft launch was cancelled in 2013.

US firm Bechtel oversaw 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 constructed the main terminal building and concourses A, B and C.

A tender to expand the main terminal building is expected in 2017. Two new concourses are also planned, D and E, which will increase the terminal’s size to more than 1 million sq m.

The expansion is scheduled to be finished in 2022 at a cost of $8.3bn.