Qatar´s Hamad International Airport (HIA) has announced a record 38,786,422 passengers in 2019, which is the greatest number of passengers it has served since the start of its operations in 2014, the company said.
Eight new passenger destinations have been added to HIA´s global network in 2019, including Davao- Philippines, Rabat- Morocco, Izmir-Turkey, Gaborone- Botswana, Langkawi- Malaysia, Mogadishu- Somalia, Malta and Lisbon- Portugal. Three new cargo destinations were added to HIA´s network: Istanbul, New York and Almaty.
Fifteen airlines operating at HIA increased their weekly flight frequencies including Kuwait Airways, Salam Air, Philippine Airlines and Oman Air. HIA also welcomed two new airline partners, Air India and Tarco Aviation. This led to HIA handling 232,917 aircraft movements in 2019, an increase of 5.57% from the previous year.
HIA announced its multi-phased airport expansion plan in 2019. Phase A of the expansion is set to consist of a central concourse linking concourses D and E and will increase the airport´s capacity to more than 53 million passengers annually by 2022. Phase B, which will be completed after 2022, will extend concourses D and E to further enhance the airport´s capacity to more than 60 million passengers annually.
Along with HIA´s self-check-in and self-bag-drop kiosks, which was introduced in the terminal to provide passengers with a faster and smoother check in process, HIA recently introduced ten automated security gates at the pre-immigration area, so passengers can scan their own boarding cards and proceed to immigration, providing passengers with a truly autonomous travel experience.
