Privatising Saudi Arabia’s international airports, particularly Jeddah’s King Abdulaziz International airport (KAIA), is highly viable due to the well-documented number of passengers passing through the airports as well as potential non-aeronautical revenues, such as those arising from operating duty-free shops.

KAIA handled more than 30 million passengers in 2015, up 6.6 per cent from the previous year.

“We would definitely be interested in bidding, along with financial partners or the financial division of our group, for [full concession] of these airports,” the CEO of a contracting company tells MEED.

The same contractor said they were initially interested to prequalify for the Taif airport public-private partnership (PPP) project, but withdrew from the prequalification process because they could not get a firm commitment from the General Authority of Civil Aviation (Gaca) in terms of the number of passengers that are likely to be diverted to Taif from the other airport terminals that cater to the annual umrah and hajj pilgrims.

“We wanted a minimum offtake guarantee from Gaca, but they were not willing to make a commitment at the time,” the contractor tells MEED.

The planned Taif International airport will be the second full-scale airport PPP in the kingdom. The first was awarded in 2012 to a joint venture of Turkey’s TAV Airports and local contracting firms Saudi Oger and Al-Rajhi. The expanded Prince Mohammed bin Abdulaziz International airport in Medina entered full operations in June 2015.

Saudi Arabia plans to privatise all of its existing 27 airports, four of which cater to international flights, by 2020.

The overall passenger traffic at the kingdom’s airports rose by 10 per cent in 2015 to reach 81.9 million, while aircraft movements reached 646,693 flights, up 9.8 per cent from 2014.