JEDDAH, 23 July — As summer peaked, the air-conditioning system at King Abdul Aziz International Airport’s Southern Terminal broke down once again causing untold misery to both passengers and employees.
The airport cooling system started malfunctioning at a time when hundreds of thousands of vacationers and tourists throng the airport for flights within the Kingdom and abroad. The Jeddah airport handles 160 flights daily with more than 25,000 passengers.
Extreme outside temperatures and high humidity as well as the narrow passenger lounges aggravated the suffering of the passengers. The problem also hit some 600 employees of 60 service offices, which have resorted to desert coolers and fans for some respite. Air-conditioning system in 26 of the 32 mobile lounges, which took passengers to the aircraft, was also not working.
It is the second year in a row the airport’s air-conditioning system is breaking down during the summer. A high humidity rate combined with high temperatures that hit the region had caused last year’s breakdown. Sources at the General Presidency for Civil Aviation said at the time that the air-conditioning machinery, based on water cooling system, was too old to cope with the high temperature and humidity rates.
Sami Maqbool, KAIA director, had said that higher authorities had approved a plan to find a permanent solution to the problem. A national company had been given a contract worth SR17 million to repair the system. The project should have been completed within a year.
An official source at the airport, on condition of anonymity, told Arab News that some air-conditioning units at the passenger lounges “have to be replaced to solve the problem once and for all”. “Maintenance work alone will not be enough as the contracting company will not be able to restore the old and shabby air-conditioners to their full capacity,” he said.
The airport was established 20 years ago and most of its equipment and facilities have crossed their presumed life span.
The air-conditioning system has become obsolete 10 to 15 years ago, the source said, adding that it was difficult to get spare parts for them.
Authorities have devised a plan for expanding the airport to increase its capacity to 21 million passengers annually by the year 2020. Dr. Ali ibn Abdul Rahman Al-Khalaf, president of PCA, said the project, to be completed by 2007, would include construction of new passenger terminals and other facilities.
Jeddah airport is the main gateway for hundreds of thousands Haj and Umrah pilgrims who come to Makkah and Madinah from around the world every year.
Last year the airport received more than 2.6 million passengers. The number of passengers is expected to increase substantially after the government’s decision to open up the country to tourists and to issue Umrah visas throughout the year.
