Jeddah’s King Abdulaziz International Airport (KAIA) saw a record 30 million passengers travel through the facility in 2015, recording a 6.6 percent increase over the previous year, said a report.

"This is the largest number of passengers in all the Kingdom’s airports," the airport’s director Abdullah Al Rimi said.

He said since its inception, the airport has been witnessing an increasing number of air traffic movement which is three times its actual capacity, Saudi Gazette reported.

"The large number of passengers using the airport is accounted to the increasing number of Haj and Umrah pilgrims, tourism and economic activities," Al-Rimi noted.

However, he expressed concern at the continuous rise in the air traffic and the increasing number of passengers, saying it represented a challenge to the airport in its transitional period before the shift to the new airport.

“We have a big responsibility to provide excellent services to the passengers and to all airline companies using the airport,” he said. "When it is formally opened, the new airport will satisfy the needs of the air transport market in the Kingdom,” Al-Rimi said.

The upgraded airport will become fully operational by the middle of 2017. The first phase of the project will be completed by the end of 2016 and will start receiving flights in the last quarter of 2017, according to officials.

With the completion of the first phase, which includes a terminal complex spreading over an area of 720,000-sq-m, 46 gates for international and domestic flights, and 94 air bridges to serve aircraft of different sizes, the airport will have the capacity to handle 30 million passengers a year, the report said.