GACA President inspects new Terminal 5 in Riyadh’s King Khaled International Airport

His Excellency Mr. Sulaiman Bin Abdullah Al-Hamdan, President of the General Authority of Civil Aviation (GACA), visited the new Terminal 5 in King Khaled International Airport (KKIA) in Riyadh to inspect the work in progress and the achievements made to date.  

His Excellency was accompanied by Mr. Yousef Bin Ibrahim Al-Abdan, Director of KKIA, Mr. Basem Bin Abdullah Al-Sallom, Marketing General Manager in GACA, and Eng. Abdulelah Bin Hamad Al-Fozan, project supervisor from GACA’s projects sector.

The Terminal 5 project was implemented to transfer passenger traffic from Terminal 3 to Terminal 5 during the period of the expansion and development of Terminals 3 and 4. The new terminal will contribute to the expected growing number of passengers once all the other terminals are completed. Terminal 5 is expected to be completed by the end of 2015 and after that testing for operational readiness; activation and transition (ORAT) will begin.

Commenting on his visit, His Excellency said: “We thank Allah for the many achievements made in this project, having completed 65% of the overall work. The project is made to realize the vision of the government and also it is part of GACA’s strategies to develop the aviation sector in the kingdom. This will enable us to provide advanced services for travelers at King Khaled International Airport in Riyadh where we expect significant growth in the number of travelers. In addition, we are developing other terminals in the airport since KKIA is one of the main points of entry into the kingdom”.

Terminal 5 is expected to be ready by the end of 2015 in accordance with the 30 months duration of the contract, which was awarded to the consortium of Turkish TAV and Saudi Al-Arab Company in 11 July 2013. A Saudi consultant was hired to be supervisory consultant to the project.

The overall size of Terminal 5 is 100,000 sqm to allow for passengers on 8 jumbo airplanes or 16 medium size airplanes. The terminal’s annual capacity is 12 million passengers a year. It has 60 counters for luggage check-in; 20 self-service counters; five new luggage belts with a total length of 415 meters; 30 elevators; 19 escalators; and 6 electronic moving walks. The first and business class halls cover an area of 2,138 sqm.