Biggest airport to open by 2030 with 6 runways and 120M passenger a year | Hacker News Reader

Biggest airport to open by 2030 with 6 runways and 120M passenger a year

thesun.co.uk

19 pointsteleforce49 comments

The region has huge capacity following major airport projects in Doha and Dubai, and terminal upgrade in Bahrain:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Al_Maktoum_International_Airpo...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hamad_International_Airport

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bahrain_International_Airport#...

UAE now has old Dubai airport (DXB), new Dubai airport (DWC) and Abu Dhabi (AUH) all within 130 km (80 miles) of each other.

KSA has Dubai Envy - it always aims to do what Dubai is doing now, but with about a 20-year time lag, and it often fails. For example, the Riyadh Financial District (KAFD) is largely empty, except for companies forced to go there by threats from the government.

> KSA has Dubai Envy - it always aims to do what Dubai is doing now, but with about a 20-year time lag, and it often fails. For example, the Riyadh Financial District (KAFD) is largely empty, except for companies forced to go there by threats from the government.

All it takes is for Saudi government regulation to mandate setting up in Saudi Freezones, and one will see Dubai's spigot drying up. Saudi's inefficiencies were the reason for Dubai's gains, and with that going away at a very rapid pace under MBS, I don't know what future Dubai has, except as a tax Haven.

But for that, the Saudis have an uphill battle trying to get Jeddah and Dammam ports on par with Dubai's Jebel Ali freezone. The holdover time for cargo in JAFZA is 3 days on average, compared to Jeddah's 45 days.

45 day holdover when tour neighbour has 3 days? Holey moley. That's got to make it hard to be competitive.

Dubai DIFC has English-language commercial law, with British Law as a backstop for appeals and ambiguity. I can't imagine KSA agreeing to that, and even if they did, nobody would trust them - it's a rather capricious absolute monarchy.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dubai_International_Financial_...

Dubai does not have oil, so it depends on its business environment, plus a little tourism. That will keep it honest. KSA is inefficient, inept, corrupt and positively dishonest, so it will never win.

And literally nobody on the planet wants to live in Riyadh.

Saudi Arabia has already upgraded Jeddah airport (JED) for Hajj traffic:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/King_Abdulaziz_International_A...

with trains to Makkah (Mecca) and Madinah (Medina) on the Haramain high-speed railway:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haramain_High_Speed_Railway

It's almost 900 km (560 miles) from Riyadh airport to Makkah, so it doesn't make sense to use RUH for the Hajj.

Good luck catching a layover if you are Jewish or have an Israeli stamp on your passport. Last time I checked the staff of Saudi destined airlines wouldn't even let "undesirables" on an incoming flight...

I've been to Israel before, and I have visited KSA recently, no worries.

Things have changed a lot - there used to be a time when the same people wouldn't be allowed in Dubai, and now we have Israeli porn sites shooting videos of naked models on Dubai balconies.

> now we have Israeli porn sites shooting videos of naked models on Dubai balconies.

Disgusting. What websites?

Salsa:

https://www.thesun.co.uk/news/14632180/naked-models-dubai-ph...

There's more active content that's just a Google search away. ;)

So just like the US banning folks just passing through "undesirable" parts of the world? ;-)

This is a completely unfair and unfactual assumption you made.

I entered Saudi Arabia just this morning with a star of David necklace on my neck (yes it was under my shirt, but it wasn't hidden or anything). There was not even the slightest sign of discomfort nor disapproval. Just a friendly and helpful border officer who said, "Welcome to Kingdom. Have a wonderful time".

And this notion of separation into "undesirables" in Gulf countries is also just plain false. The UAE just granted visa-free access to Indian nationals.

I would check the information you are relying on if this is the kind of assumptions you are making.

> And this notion of separation into "undesirables" in Gulf countries is also just plain false. The UAE just granted visa-free access to Indian nationals.

This isn’t exactly a convincing argument for the claim here, which to be fair I also wouldn’t phrase in that way, but it is telling that the citizenship/naturalization laws are deeply separate for foreign workers as opposed to locals in many Gulf countries.

No alcohol in the airport.

No alcohol on any connecting flight for certain airlines (Saudia, Turkish), or just no alcohol while in Saudi airspace for other airlines (BA). KSA is a big desert country, with a big dry airspace.

Oh, the terror... not getting drunk while flying!

some LCC ban drinking anything alcoholic aboard that was not bough aboard so 'clever' morons buy soda and vodka and the airport and spike the soda in the bathroom... kinda pathetic what addiction does to some...

The point is not (dis)approval for the activity, it's the effect on ticket sales at the margin.

If a tourist intends to sleep all the way to Thailand, it might not make much difference, and they may chose the lowest price. If a banker if flying business class London to Singapore, they will fly Emirates via Dubai instead.

I'm not sure that availability of alcohol on a flight is crucial/essential when deciding whether to take given flight or not...

I recently visited King Abdullah Economic City (KAEC, [1]) in Saudi Arabia. It was intended to have a population of 2 million, but according to the Financial Times only had a population of 7000 in 2018. It was like a ghost town when I visited, so I don't think it has increased much since then.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/King_Abdullah_Economic_City

With so many promises being made about "Vision 2030", I worry that the amount of discontent that results when it turns out to be a disappointment might lead to instability

Development in the oil rich countries of the Middle East is strange. Everything is planned and designed by Americans/Europeans and built by South Asians/poorer Arabs. They don’t really build any skill or capabilities in their local population say, for example, like India.

This will eventually destroy them

My guess is that stuff like the highly competitive airlines at first serve to at least let people set foot in those countries and change perceptions.

Then as you have cheap flights in and out, slowly increase commerce?

Not just the airport. It’s everything. All their infrastructure, all their building and refineries etc.

Sure, just like the 16 other Saudi megaprojects that will all totally get built and attract hundreds of millions of tourists overnight as their PR firms are telling us.

Well they do have the money. I'm sure they can build it.

They won't get the tourists (except for the yearly mekka pilgrimage) but perhaps they're going for a hub thing like Dubai.

I always wonder if having unlimited money is all it takes. There's only so many excavators in the world, and hiring every single one would probably tank someone's economy

> I always wonder if having unlimited money is all it takes.

Just ask the US. They have experience with such things. /s

This is the point. I k ow plenty of travelling women and families who will take other routes because the area is associated with such a poor view (read: personal risk or inconvenience) for women.

I'm not US based and on our way to Europe there are a couple of options for transit hubs.

I know plenty of people who go from Asia to Europe via the Middle East because the other route via the US involves getting a US visa and doing the full trip though immigration, customers and usually security.

It would take us a great deal longer to go via the US from our western pacific location. There are quite a few options from Asia to Europe which do not go through the middle east.

Other middle eastern airlines (Emirates, Qatar, Etihad, Turkish) have all the same advantages and a decades-long head start on Saudi. Simply building a fancy airport isn't all that it takes to compete in what is already a cut throat industry.

2034 Football World Cup is in Saudi Arabia.

Will it be busier than Atlanta's airport, the busiest airport in the world?

Biggest doesn't mean a thing, although Atlanta's airport is also huge.

Smallest and busiest would be much more impressive.

It probably has to serve a much larger burst passenger capacity than Atlanta given that it like most Saudi mega projects needs to serve the ever increasing needs of the annual Hadj. However the other 11 months of the year will look like a podunk regional airport.

It won't be. Dubai Int'l and Istanbul were both also built by their governments to be the largest in the world and are already open. Per wikipedia neither has come anywhere close to ATL so far -- 66 and 64 million as compared to 93.7 million passengers in 2022 -- although much closer than most normal airports of course.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_busiest_airports_by_...

Why is Atlanta so big I wonder? It's not a huge city right? Is there a lot of transfers or something? I've never been to the US :)

It’s not a small city, but the volume of traffic the airport has to handle is because it’s a transfer hub. Atlanta is a 2hr flight from 80% of the US population (not geographically).

Plus all of the Caribbean islands. And close enough to make it as a transfer to Latin America as well

It's the hub for Delta (one of the major US airlines).

> It's the hub for Delta (one of the major US airlines).

I think Delta is the largest airline in the world:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Largest_airlines_in_the_world

They have so many huge buildings near/in that airport its crazy

It's the hub-and-spoke model.

For n cities, there are n^2 possible connections. Most of these will see hardly any traffic, so a direct flight would only happen once a week or so. With hub-and-spoke, everyone coming from Small City A will fly on the same quite-frequent flight to Atlanta, regardless of their intended destination. In Atlanta they'll all transfer to their own flights, going back to the individual smaller cities.

And ATL weather almost never causes flights to be disrupted.

Don’t buy the s*n. Don’t read the s*n. Don’t regurgitate the s*n.

That's weird. The map at the top of the article (top left pic under "Worlds Biggest Airport") has the country outlined to show the location.

However, the country they've outlined is Syria, not Saudi Arabia. Wrong country.

Well, I guess this is why The Sun has such a poor reputation for accuracy. :(

They have fixed the image now.

Thanks. Yep it looks correct now. :)

A friend recently returned from a vacation in Saudi Arabia. She said that there were very few tourists for the size of facilities that are there.

Her prediction is that Saudi Arabia will not be able to attract mass tourism until they allow people to drink alcohol in the country.

I wonder if Saudi Arabia is expecting Mecca-style tourism:

   * relatively few people for most of the year
   * a colossal crowd of people once a year during the hajj

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hajj#Timing_of_Hajj

King Salman International Airport in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, is set to become the largest airport in the world, following its opening in 2030.

LOL yea.

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