Saudi Arabia’s Massive New Airport

As expected, the numbers are MASSIVE.

Saudi Arabia’s King Salman International Airport will soon join the world’s largest airports, as it aims to become one among them. Currently, the world’s largest airport by area is King Fahd International, which is also located in the kingdom.

The new Airport will be 57 kilometers squared, which makes double the size of Dubai’s airport, currently standing at 28 kilometers squared.

What is staggering however is the number of passengers that the airport is being designed to handle:

By 2030, the airport aims to accommodate up to 120 million travelers and 185 million travelers, with the capacity to process 3.5 million tons of cargo by 2050.

Currently, the busiest airport in the world by passenger capacity is Hartsfield–Jackson in Atlanta, Georgia (USA), with 75 million passengers annually. Dubai isn’t even in the top 10 by comparison, sitting at #27 globally with 29 million passengers.

Building a massive airport is one thing. Getting people to use it is another. I can only guess that they are targeting Africa’s fast rising middle class, where the population is double that of Latin America (600million in LATAM vs 1.2 billion in Africa), which is the greatest contributor to Atlanta’s numbers.

Lead designer is Foster + Partners, which seems to have found their way in the Middle East, given that they also won the competition for the Red Sea Development airport, and I love how stunning both look.

The new King Salman airport is going for LEED Platinum, bringing sustainability at the core of this initiative, just the way it should be.