Arab News, Sat, Jun 01, 2024 | Dhu al-Qadah 24, 1445
Saudi Shoura Council calls on GACA to establish low-cost airports around Riyadh
Saudi Arabia:
Saudi Arabia will soon assess the feasibility of establishing low-cost airports
around Riyadh following a call from the Kingdom’s Shoura Council.
The country’s Consultative Assembly urged the
General Authority of Civil Aviation to build and operate the planned airports or
offer them to the private sector in a build-operate-transfer manner, according
to a post on X.
Additionally, the council recommended that GACA
collaborate with national carriers to increase domestic flights and diversify
their destinations to enhance transportation and tourism services.
These initiatives align with the Kingdom’s
aviation sector goals, such as increasing passenger numbers and expanding flight
routes. They also support GACA’s vision of enabling Saudi leadership in aviation
through customer-centric and digitally-enabled regulatory services.
The council also emphasized the need for GACA to
activate the annual target for air freight in accordance with the National
Transport and Logistics Strategy.
Earlier this week, Riyadh-based King Khalid
International Airport was recognized as one of the top three performing
terminals in the Kingdom, according to official data.
In its monthly report for April, GACA indicated
that the airport led the category for international terminals with over 15
million passengers annually, achieving an 82 percent compliance rate with the
authority’s standards.
The evaluation, based on 11 key criteria, aims to
improve service quality and enhance the passenger experience.
Earlier in May, in an interview with Arab News on
the sidelines of the Future Aviation Forum held in Riyadh, Vice President of
GACA for Quality and Traveler Experience, Abdulaziz Al-Dahmash, said the Kingdom
has set “very ambitious targets” in this sector.
He noted that these targets include tripling the
number of passengers compared to 2019, handling 4.5 million tonnes of cargo, and
establishing more than 250 direct destinations from the Kingdom’s airports to
global locations.
“Those key targets need enablers, and one of the
key pillars is our passenger experience, and we always say that the passenger
comes first, so from that perspective, we started different programs from a
regulator perspective,” Al-Dahmash told Arab News at the time.