- IATA
- RUH
- the code on your bag tag
- ICAO
- OERK
- used by air traffic control
- Opened
- 1983
- per Wikidata
- Passengers
- 16.8M
- in 2021
History & name
King Khalid International Airport opened in 1983 and is named after Khalid of Saudi Arabia, King of Saudi Arabia (1911-1982). It lies 30 km from Riyadh, has two runways, the longer measuring 4,205 m, and handled 16.8 million passengers in 2021.
Named afterKhalid of Saudi Arabia — King of Saudi Arabia (1911-1982)
Read more: Wikipedia ↗ · Wikidata ↗
At a glance
- Full name
- King Khalid International Airport
- Serves
- Riyadh, Saudi Arabia
- City centre
- 30 km from Riyadh
- Opened
- 1983
- Passengers
- 16.8 million in 2021
- Runways
- 2 runways, longest 4,205 m
- Elevation
- 2,049 ft (625 m)
- Website
- kkia.sa ↗
Where it sits
25.0°N, 46.7°E puts RUH in the northern hemisphere, 2,775 km from the equator and 7,232 km from the North pole.
Of the 661 airports on this site it is the 353rd most northerly, which makes it the 309th most southerly.
Straight through the middle
Straight down through the centre of the Earth comes out at 25.0°S, 133.3°W. The nearest airport on this site to that point is Fa'a'ā (PPT) in French Polynesia, still 1,877 km away — most of the planet's antipodes are ocean.
What’s near it
The closest other airport on this site is King Fahd (DMM), 353 km away in a straight line. Nothing else on this site is within 100 km.
Distances from RUH
Great circle distance and an estimated time in the air.
| To | Distance | Estimated | |
|---|---|---|---|
| London | LHR | 4,940 km | 6h 38m |
Where these facts come from
The profile is looked up, not written from memory: type, runways, elevation and the official website from OurAirports (public domain); opening year, namesake, operator and passenger count from Wikidata (CC0); the city centre from GeoNames (CC BY 4.0). Where a source has nothing, the line is left out. Distances, neighbours and the antipode are computed from the coordinates.
What you won’t find: terminal maps, airline lists, shops or live departures. Orbit is a logbook, not a flight tracker, and a page that guessed at those would be worse than one that leaves them out.
Flown through RUH?
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