It has been the busiest start of the year for Hamad International Airport (HIA) as it recorded serving at least one million passengers in the first week of January 2020.

Recognized as one of the world’s best airports, HIA swiftly managed the “record high influx of passengers” during the winter holiday peak season.

Handling the record one million passengers in one week means that the airport was able to serve about 138,649 passengers in a 24-hour period. This is the highest number of passengers HIA has handled in one day. 

This is particularly impressive as HIA served the passengers maintaining its world-class standards of passenger experience and operational excellence.

During this period in January, queuing times were also significantly lower. On average, passengers waited for as low as 1 minute 20 seconds at transfer security and 2 minutes 24 seconds at arrival immigration.

About 99.4 percent of passengers transferring through HIA queued for less than 5 minutes at security screening points, with an average wait time of only a minute and 20 seconds.

An industry-leading accomplishment, this average waiting time at security was maintained at the airport through all of 2019.  HIA strived to achieve this by increased training of airport staff according to the highest international security standards.

Furthermore, due to the airport’s screening arrangements at specific gates, nearly 100 percent of those passengers transferring at HIA with Minimum Connecting Time (MCT) of 45 minutes or less were able to catch their next flights without any delay.

HIA said in the future it would adopt even more advanced screening technologies that would eliminate the need to remove laptops from cabin bags to save time and enhance the travel experience for passengers.

At immigration, 96.5 percent of passengers who arrived at peak periods had to queue for less than 10 minutes.

Keeping passenger convenience and ease of travel in mind, HIA also opened free parking to its customers during the peak periods.

Self-service kiosks, installed under HIA’s Smart Airport program, also proved highly beneficial for this period as those departing through the airport could use the automated check-in, bag-drop and get done with pre-immigration security processes.

HIA also recently announced serving 38.8 million passengers in 2019, marking a 12.44 percent increase from passenger numbers in 2018.

HIA’s ambitious expansion plans are in full swing with the airport aiming to serve about 60 million passengers a year by 2022.

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