JEDDAH: King Abdul Aziz International Airport (KAIA) in Jeddah will have a new state-of-the-art terminal with 74 jet bridges to receive both foreign and Saudia planes, Abdullah Ruhaimy, president of the General Authority for Civil Aviation (GACA), announced yesterday.
Speaking to reporters after signing an agreement with Aéroports de Paris Company of France to provide design and engineering services for the first phase of KAIA’s development project, Ruhaimy said the new airport terminal is designed to receive 30 million passengers annually and would be ready by 2012.
Crown Prince Sultan, deputy premier and minister of defense and aviation, witnessed the signing of the agreement, which is valued at SR514.9 million ($137 million).
Ruhaimy and Pierre Graff, chairman and CEO of ADP, signed the pact for the new airport, which will replace the present Northern and Southern Terminals.
The new terminal, according to an official GACA statement, will receive aircraft of varying sizes, including 555-seat A380 planes. It will also have a new air control tower with advanced aviation systems and an air cargo village with an annual capacity of three million tons in addition to new tarmacs and aircraft parking facilities.
ADP will design a railway station, which is to be established adjacent to passenger lounges, a multistory car parking building, a general plan for maintenance facilities, roads leading to the new terminal, an internal road network, aircraft parking areas and new tarmacs, as well as investment and commercial areas.
“The main objective of this airport development project is to make KAIA a central airport that would link the Kingdom’s east with the west, and become a major hub for the distribution of passengers,” Ruhaimy said. “It will also meet the requirements of the new generation of giant aircraft,” he added.
In January 2007, Prince Sultan signed a SR902.91 million contract with Al-Mabani Company to develop and upgrade aviation facilities of the Jeddah airport. The contract covered expansion of the airport’s tarmac and runways. The work also included the construction of a new aircraft parking facility west of the Haj Terminal as well as modernization of ground lights systems and information technology infrastructure. Makkah Gov. Prince Khaled Al-Faisal recently inspected expansion work being carried out at Jeddah airport.
The development of KAIA comes ahead of a government plan to transform international airports into state-owned corporations. Prince Sultan bin Salman, secretary-general of the General Commission for Tourism and Antiquities (GCTA) and chairman of the Supervising Committee for the Development of King Khaled International Airport in Riyadh, has confirmed the government’s plan.
“There are plans to transform civil aviation into different sectors to privatize them and open them for investment,” the Saudi Press Agency quoted Prince Sultan as saying. He said the GACA was planning to carry out a number of projects, including airport cities, and providing more areas for exhibitions and other services. “We in GCTA see the need to develop and expand all airports in the Kingdom to boost domestic tourism,” he added.
