Contractors have until September to submit bids for work at King Abdulaziz International Airport in Jeddah and the new airport at Abha in the southern province of Asir.

Saudi Arabia’s General Authority for Civil Aviation (Gaca) has extended the bid deadline for the main construction contract at the Abha airport to 22 September. The deadline was originally set for 19 August.

The new airport will have capacity for five million passengers a year and will cover a total area of 80,000 square metres and contain 21 passenger gates. In addition to the terminal building, the deal will involve building other airport infrastructure, including a control tower, car parks and facilities such as mosques.

Work on the expansion and upgrade of the King Abdulaziz airport is making progress. Bids for the design and construction contracts for the upgrade of entrance 17 at the airport’s Hajj terminal are due to be submitted on 16 September. The winning contractor for work on the Jeddah airport’s Apron 6 is expected to be announced within the next month, well over a year since the deal was first floated. It is thought that local firm Al-Mabani General Contractors is the frontrunner for the contract.

Firms have also submitted prequalification documents for the expansion of Riyadh’s King Khalid International airport. The deal covers the design-and-build contract for the expansion of terminal 3, as well as the currently unused terminal 4 and additional landside work and concourses.

In February, the local arm of US-based Aecom, Aecom Arabia, was appointed to project manage the Riyadh airport’s expansion scheme. The aim of the upgrade is to increase the airport’s annual capacity to 24 million passengers from the current 14 million.

In May, Gaca awarded a joint venture of Turkey’s TAV and the local Al-Arrab Contracting Company the estimated SR1.5bn ($400m) contract to build the new terminal 5 building at King Khalid International airport.