The agreement, which was signed Monday by Jeddah Gov. Prince Mishaal bin Majed and GACA representatives, will also aim to improve infrastructure at the airport.

“The agreement signed today hopes to implement training and courses to improve the performances of workers and to stress on cooperation between different departments working at the airport,” said Prince Mishaal. “Our goal is to serve passengers, both locals and expatriates, or any other traveler. The aim is to provide distinguished services quickly. We hope that this agreement will achieve its aims though cooperation between the civil and security sectors at the airport.”

“We are going to select a group of employees belonging to different departments who will then in turn train other workers,” KAIA General Manager Mohammad Abid told Arab News.

“We will start by training from each department three to four people, who will in turn be qualified to train up to 1000 workers.”

The trainers, explained Abid, will have substantial experience.

“What this agreement will achieve is improve cooperation between various departments at the airport, and help facilitate the exchange of expertise.” The program, he added, would be implemented within six months.

“We have a certain passenger capacity at the airport and the main obstacle we faced recently was the weather changes that resulted in flight delays or planes coming back after taking off, and therefore there was passenger congestion,” added Abid.

“We have already started transferring flights carrying Umrah pilgrims to the Haj terminal to reduce the pressure on other terminals. There were 36,000 pilgrims at the airport yesterday, meaning the high season is upon us.”

He said last week the airport had two cases where at least 80 passengers were delayed and clustering in the halls, causing congestion because they had to rebook their flights and wait for them.

The problems, he added, are exacerbated by foreign agencies that tend to transport passengers to the airport one day before their flights are due to leave to reduce costs.

Abid said they have specified fines for offending agencies. Punishments also include reducing the numbers of flights given to them. However, he refused to specify the countries where these agencies come from.