KUWAIT CITY -- Kuwait International Airport held a building completion ceremony to celebrate the opening of its new terminal on Wednesday, taking a step closer to become an aviation hub in the Middle East.

And behind the grand opening, Incheon International Airport Corporation was there to pass on its expertise and knowhow. 

“It is the first time for Kuwait to have selected a foreign airport operator. The expertise of the IIAC, which comes from 18 years of airport operations, will enhance the quality of the service of the Kuwaiti airport,” Dr. Jenan Mohsen Hassan Ramadan, Kuwait’s Minister of State for Services Affairs, said during a celebration event. 

The event, attended by Emir of Kuwait Sabah Al-Ahmad Al-Jaber Al-Sabah and dozens of ministerial officials, was held inside the duty-free concession at the Kuwait International Airport’s Terminal 4. 

The construction of T4 comes two months after Korea’s main gateway operator clinched a 140 billion won ($120 million) deal to operate, manage, maintain and develop T4 by 2023. 

It is the airport operator’s biggest overseas contract to date, exceeding its total cumulative overseas contracts worth $93.4 million, according to the company. 

Spanning an area of 55,000 square meters which includes 14 gates and 2,450 parking spaces, T4 was designed to reduce traffic at the current terminal. It will be exclusively used by Kuwait Airways, the national carrier of Kuwait, from August.

“With the successful completion of T4, we will take this opportunity to actively secure operating rights of other airports in the Middle East,” said Chung Il-young, president of IIAC at the event. 

IIAC has beaten other global airport operators such as ADP of France, Fraport of Germany, TAV of Turkey and DAA of Ireland for Kuwait’s new terminal bid. 

“The Kuwaiti government highly acclaimed our experience in successfully opening Terminal 2 of Incheon International Airport this year,” he said. 

“As the Kuwaiti government has launched New Kuwait 2035 project to develop the city into a regional logistics and finance hub, Korean businesses will have more opportunities to enter the Kuwaiti market in many sectors other than aviation,” he added. 

Kuwait International Airport, wholly owned by the Kuwaiti government, is a regional aviation hub with passenger traffic reaching 1.2 million as of last year. 

When T4 officially opens in August, the airport will become capable of accommodating up to 4.5 million passengers annually. 

Following the test operation of T4 for three months from May to August, the IIAC will mainly manage the overall business including commercial contracts, operating supplementary facilities and maintenance work. 

“Constraints at Kuwait International Airport were among the factors holding the aviation business growth at present. The new T4 will also help Kuwait Airways to launch new routes to Tbilisi, Georgia, and Trabzon in Turkey over the summer, and it’s considering measures to reduce costs,” said Kuwait Airways Company CEO Yousef Al-Jasem. 

Meanwhile, IIAC also celebrated the opening of the new airport in Istanbul, which it participated as an operational consultant along with the Copenhagen Airport. 

In 2015, the IIAC was selected as a consultant for Istanbul’s new airport project by 2020, to offer knowhow on strategy and business plan development, human resource management, organizational development and operational readiness. 

The new Istanbul airport, with its official name is undecided, will officially open on Oct. 29, with an aim to become the new center of the aviation which can connect passengers from East and West. 

With 77 boarding gates and 143 boarding bridges, the new Istanbul airport will host up to 300 destinations for departure on its six independent runways which will gradually be used by 2020. 

IIAC has been involved by working side-by-side with the local airport operator IGA to develop the concept of operation and ensure that best features such as high-tech self-check in systems are incorporated. 

“Incheon Airport has provided us their expertise in attaining our scale, comfort, innovation, efficiency and profitability objectives which helped us to enhance the passenger experience,” said Kadir Samsunlu, CEO of the new Istanbul airport operator IGA. 

By Kim Da-sol (ddd@heraldcorp.com)
Korea Herald correspondent