---
title: "RUH — King Khalid Airport, Riyadh · Orbit"
description: "King Khalid International Airport (RUH/OERK) serves Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. Opened 1983, named after Khalid of Saudi Arabia, 16.8 million passengers in 2021."
url: https://orbitflights.app/airports/ruh
---

Riyadh · Saudi Arabia · Asia

# RUH — King Khalid

King Khalid International Airport serves Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, 30 km from the city centre, and sits at 25.0°N, 46.7°E. This site carries 1 route touching it, with the great circle distance for each.

**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 after **Khalid of Saudi Arabia** — King of Saudi Arabia (1911-1982)

Read more: [Wikipedia ↗](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/King%5FKhalid%5FInternational%5FAirport) · [Wikidata ↗](https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q47157)

## 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)

**Map**
[Open in Google Maps ↗](https://www.google.com/maps/search/?api=1&query=24.95760,46.69880)

**Website**
[kkia.sa ↗](https://www.kkia.sa/en/Pages/default.aspx)

## 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](https://orbitflights.app/routes/lhr-to-ruh) | LHR | 4,940 km | 6h 38m    |

[Distance from RUH to any airport →](https://orbitflights.app/distance?from=RUH&to=LHR) [Map a trip from RUH →](https://orbitflights.app/tools/flight-route-map?r=RUH-LHR)

## Where these facts come from

The profile is looked up, not written from memory: type, runways, elevation and the official website from [OurAirports](https://ourairports.com/data/) (public domain); opening year, namesake, operator and passenger count from [Wikidata](https://www.wikidata.org/) (CC0); the city centre from [GeoNames](https://www.geonames.org/) (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.

[Measure RUH to anywhere →](https://orbitflights.app/distance)

## Flown through RUH?

Orbit knows all 8,801 airports offline and works out the distance the moment you enter two codes.

[Download now](https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.qwertybit.orbit)

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Markdown copy of https://orbitflights.app/airports/ruh for language models and agents. Site index: https://orbitflights.app/llms.txt