Prince and Prime Minister of Saudi Arabia Mohammed bin Salman has just announced the master plan for King Salman International Airport, future air hub in Saudi Arabia. This plan will strengthen Riyadh as a global logistics centre, stimulating transport, trade and tourism and serving as a bridge between East and West.
The airport project is part of the vision 2030 for Saudi Arabia, which aims to raise Riyadh among the world's top ten business cities and support the growth of Riyadh's population, which is expected to reach 15 to 20 million inhabitants by 2030. All of this is accompanied by pharaonic projects in the country around the transformation of the historic city ofAlUla into a leading tourist and cultural destination or the project Neoma futuristic city built on the shores of the Red Sea.
It is in fact a a real aeropolis which the Prime Minister intends to create. Covering an area of 57 km2, which will make it one of the largest airports in the world, the future airport complex will have six parallel runways, a capacity of 120 million passengers in the various terminals and a capacity of up to 1,000 million passengers.. The future King Salman International Airport will incorporate the existing terminals of King Khalid International Airport.
185 million passengers in Riyadh by 2050
The future airport will also include 12 km² of facilities for airport and para-airport activities. This includes residential and recreational facilities, retail outlets and other logistics real estate.
To 2050the airport should be able to handle 185 million passengers and a handling capacity of 3.5 million tonnes of freight. More than 130,000 people are expected to work at the airport hub. By way of comparison, the current airport was home to 26 million passengers in 2019, and the post-crisis rebound reached 18 million passengers last year.
Prince Mohammed Bin Salman's ambition is in fact to compete with the region's aviation heavyweights, Emirates and Qatar Airways. The government's strategy is to transform Riyadh airport into a base of operations for an entire airline network. new airline, RIA. Unlike the two Saudi-based airlines, Saudia and its low-cost subsidiary flyadeal, which operate mainly domestic and point-to-point services, the future carrier will target connecting traffic. Saudi Arabia will then be able to combine a vast a natural market of 35 million inhabitants à a hundred million transfer passengers…
