King Abdulaziz International Airport
Facts on JED
King Abdulaziz International Airport's famous Hajj Terminal is made up of ten modules of 21 white, tent-like Teflon-coated fiberglass canopies suspended from pylons, built to shelter up to 80,000 pilgrims at a time while staying naturally ventilated in the desert heat.
Source: Wikipedia
The airport is named for Ibn Saud (1876-1953), born Abdulaziz bin Abdul Rahman Al Saud in Riyadh, who recaptured his family's ancestral capital in 1902 and spent three decades conquering central and northern Arabia, unifying the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia in 1932 and ruling as its first king until his death in 1953.
Source: Wikipedia
King Khalid and Crown Prince Fahd inaugurated Jeddah's new airport on 12 April 1981, naming it after Ibn Saud, the kingdom's founder who had died 28 years earlier; the old Jeddah airport it replaced was demolished once the new one opened for service that May.
Source: Wikipedia
That tent-roofed Hajj Terminal, designed by engineer Fazlur Rahman Khan (also known for Chicago's Sears Tower), won the Aga Khan Award for Architecture in 1983 after the airport opened in 1981.
Source: Wikipedia
After King Abdulaziz met U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt aboard the USS Quincy in February 1945, the kingdom was gifted a Douglas DC-3 that began flying between Jeddah, Riyadh and Dhahran -- laying groundwork for Saudia, the national carrier founded the following year.
Source: Wikipedia
The airport's South Terminal, opened in 1981 and used exclusively by Saudia at first, was architecturally modeled on Dulles International Airport near Washington, D.C., and incorporated tent-like structures years before the more famous tented Hajj Terminal was built.
Source: Wikipedia
Terminal 1, King Abdulaziz International's 'New Terminal,' covers 810,000 square meters -- one of the largest airport terminals in the world -- and can handle 30 million passengers a year; it was officially inaugurated by King Salman in September 2019.
Source: Wikipedia
The airport shares its airfield with the Royal Saudi Air Force's King Abdullah Air Base and has a dedicated royal terminal in addition to its three operational passenger terminals, including the tented Hajj Terminal built solely for pilgrimage traffic.
Source: Wikipedia
At the airport's 1981 inauguration ceremony, a Western consul reportedly spent five minutes mistakenly addressing a bodyguard as 'Your Royal Highness,' unable to distinguish him from the crown prince before Prince Fahd actually arrived.
Source: Wikipedia
In 2022, DAA International -- a company owned by the Irish state -- won a five-year contract to manage and operate King Abdulaziz International Airport.
Source: Wikipedia