Flights to all domestic destinations from the Saudi Arabian city of Jeddah will be operated through the city’s new airport from mid-2019, a report said, citing the General Authority of Civil Aviation (GACA).

Jeddah’s new King Abdulaziz International Airport (KAIA) was soft launched in May last year, with the official opening scheduled for the first half of 2019, said a report in Saudi Gazette.

The airport is designed to serve about 30 million passengers annually and is expected to be the busiest airport in Saudi Arabia and one of the busiest in the region.

The airport has five lounges for the first class and business class passengers. Two of them will serve international flights, two domestic passengers and the fifth transit passengers, the report said.

The airport has service tunnels with a total length of 55 kilometres and a 36-km network of roads. A service passage connects all loading centres.

There are two integrated data centres connected to a fibre optics network.

The main lounge has 10 gates for the entry of passengers and six islands to complete their travel procedures, in addition to a special gate for the first and business class passengers, it said.

The lounge has 220 check-in counters to serve domestic and international flights of all airlines, in addition to 80 self-service stations.

The airport has a commercial area of 27,987 sq m — 12,000-sq-m inside the domestic lounge and 16,000-sq-m in the international lounge.

The airport's parking area can accommodate more than 21,000 cars at a time, it said.