Top:
A-10 Thunderbolt IIs parked on the taxiway of King Fahd Int'l Airport
Bottom: A
MIM-104 Patriot missile battery near the airport. The terminal building and mosque can be seen in the background. The airport is named for
King Fahd (), under whose reign it was constructed and inaugurated. As part of the government-run
Airports Development Program, the planning stages for the third and final international airport began in 1976. The site master plan was created by architecture firm
Yamasaki & Associates and
Boeing and completed in 1977, with construction beginning in 1983. The basic infrastructure of the airport was complete by the end of 1990, which allowed the U.S-led coalition forces to use the airport during the Gulf War in early 1991 for the storage of military aircraft, including 144
A-10 Thunderbolt IIs, among other aircraft such as the
AH-64 Apaches and
CH-47 Chinooks of the
101st Airborne Division, before operations were transferred to the
Ahmad al-Jaber Air Base in
Kuwait. The
General Authority of Civil Aviation of Saudi Arabia inaugurated the King Fahd International Airport and opened it to commercial traffic on 28 November 1999, and all airlines transferred their operations from the
Dhahran International Airport, which had been in use until then. Dhahran International has since been converted for military usage and was designated the
King Abdulaziz Air Base. As part of the
Saudi Vision 2030 and the National Transformation Program, King Fahd International was corporatized in July 2017 under the Dammam Airports Company (DACO), which operates and maintains the airport. In an effort to mitigate the spread of
COVID-19, all domestic and international flights were suspended until further notice on 21 March 2020. Following strict curfews and lowering in case numbers, domestic flights were allowed to operate once again on 31 May 2020. International flights finally resumed on 18 May 2021. ==Airlines and destinations==