Saudi Arabia airports traffic rises in 2018

16 January 2019
Saudi Arabia has been expanding the capacity of its international and domestic airports to cater to growing demand

There were 7.4 per cent more passengers that passed through Saudi Arabia’s airports in 2018 compared to the previous year, the kingdom’s General Authority of Civil Aviation (Gaca) said in a statement.

This growth rate puts the total number of passengers to approximately 98.6 million, given the kingdom’s 27 airports reported handling 91.9 million passengers in 2017.

Gaca said the overall number of flights also increased by 3.4 per cent to reach an estimated 773,000 flights last year.

YearPassenger traffic (million passengers)
2018>98
201791.9
201685.3
201581.6
Source: Gaca

Saudi Arabia has been expanding its international airports and building new or upgrading existing domestic airports to meet growing air travel demand.

The airport in Riyadh is being upgraded, while there are plans to procure four new airport developments via a public-private partnership (PPP) model. A new airport is also planned for Neom.

Gaca is overseeing the four-phase launch plan of Jeddah’s new $7.2bn King Abdulaziz International airport, which began soft operation in May last year.

Gaca terminated in February last year the 20-year operation and management contract it awarded to Changi Airports Saudi Arabia (Casa), a joint venture of Singapore-based Changi Airports International (CAI) and local firm Saudi Naval Services, for the new airport.

Gaca has yet to retender the contract.

The new airport is expected to have the capacity to handle up to 30 million passengers annually.

Among other milestones 2018, Gaca said it has completed the development of the Tabuk airport and set in motion the first phase of its unified airports model project. This includes the airports in Jizan, Al-Jouf, Al-Qurayyat and Qunfudhah.

Construction work on the $685m airport in Jizan restarted in October.

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