King Abdulaziz International Airport

After earlier proposals stalled over cost, Saudi Arabia restarted planning and awarded a roughly $375 million construction contract to German firm Hochtief for a major new airport east of Jeddah.

King Khalid and Crown Prince Fahd inaugurated the airport on 12 April 1981, with commercial service beginning on 31 May 1981; the original South Terminal was modeled loosely on Washington Dulles International Airport.

Designed by Fazlur Rahman Khan and Skidmore, Owings & Merrill with tensile-roof engineering by Horst Berger, the Hajj Terminal's 210 white tent-like fabric modules were built to process up to 80,000 pilgrims at a time during the annual Hajj season.

The terminal's tensile-membrane design was honored with the Aga Khan Award for Architecture, and Guinness World Records has recognized it as the world's largest roofed structure, covering some 150 hectares (370 acres).

Saudi authorities began a multi-phase modernization and expansion program to add a new passenger terminal capable of handling growing passenger and pilgrim traffic.

After a soft opening in 2018, King Salman officially inaugurated the new 810,000 m² Terminal 1 in September 2019, designed to handle up to 30 million passengers a year and serve airlines other than Saudia.

The airport's original 1981 South Terminal, which had served Saudia for nearly 40 years, closed as operations consolidated into the new Terminal 1.