Saudi to host world’s biggest airport with capacity for 185 million annual passengers

In a few years, Saudi Arabia will be the home of the world’s biggest airport, the King Salman International Airport (KSIA).

The mega construction of what will soon be the world’s largest airport is set to kick off after a construction company from the United Kingdom known as Mace won the lucrative contract for the project.

Projections show that with planned size of 57 square kilometres, the KSIA will contain six parallel runways.

It will also subsume existing terminals belonging to Riyadh’s King Khalid International Airport, which opened in 1983.

According to GlobalData, the airport will also include 12 square kilometres of airport support facilities, residential and recreational facilities, retail outlets and other logistics real estate..

The KSIA project is expected to be completed by 2030, and will accommodate up to 120 million passengers in its opening year. This fete will effectively make it the world’s largest operating airport by passenger capacity.

Qatar’s Sh. 131 billion Rwanda airport set to beat JKIA

By the year 2050, KSIA  will target to accommodate 185 million passengers and 3.5 million tonnes of cargo annually.

To realize this project, the Saudi government is set to invest over $100 billion in its aviation sector to boost air connections from the country to more than 250 destinations worldwide.

Aircraft traffic in the Kingdom increasing from 211,000 to more than 1 million flights per year.

Riyadh’s Saudi Aviation Strategy, announced by the General Authority of Civil Aviation (GACA), envisages tripling Saudi Arabia’s annual passenger traffic to 330 million travellers by 2030.