Jeddah Airport

I'm someone that likes to fly from Europe to Asia quite often, mostly SEA. I've noticed a lot of options for travelling and it seems that, recently, Saudia has consistently gotten the best prices, gone are the days of cheap emirates flights.

I've flown with Saudia before, the following is an account of how ridiculously frustrating it was.

Let me start off by saying the airline itself doesn't seem to have any issues, I've flown with several airlines before, my favorite is emirates of course but Saudia does a very good job as well, I can't fault anything from them in regards to the flying experience itself, the planes are modern the staff is friendly and overall it's a pleasant experience.

SO WHAT THE FUCK HAPPENED WITH JEDDAH AIRPORT?????????????

First, the good:

1-The airport looks and feels new, the new terminal was built recently and it shows. It's definitively modern looking unlike Barcelona or Madrid airport, and it's pretty to look at too, overall whoever designed the new terminal did a good job

2-The airport is very clean. I have to hand it to the cleaning crew, they did a really good job, the bathrooms were spotless and everywhere I went was clean, it's definitively not an easy task for an airport of this scale and I commend them for it

Now for the bad:

1-The Wi-Fi. I don't know who they put in charge of handling the Wi-Fi at Jeddah airport but they need to be fired, it's fucking ridiculous. As soon as you arrive at the airport you notice that the airport claims to have free Wi-Fi. You think to yourself cool, I'm gonna be here for a few hours on a connecting flight maybe I can message my family and tell them I'm okay or read some emails and catch up on the specifics for my upcoming trip. So you connect to the Wi-Fi and it asks you to input your number so they can send you a message with a code to connect to the Wi-Fi, you put your number in and... Guess what, the code never fucking arrives. First time it happened I thought to myself did I do something wrong? Maybe I wrote my number down wrong. I tried it again, same thing, no code. I asked someone else that was there hey is the Wi-Fi working for you? He said no my code never arrived. Strange I thought, so I went to the help desk where I asked them hey is there a problem with the Wi-Fi or something? They told me it was temporary and the Wi-Fi wasn't working right now, I asked them if there was somewhere I could go to pay for Wi-Fi or something they said no.

I came back 20 days later after my trip was over, the Wi-Fi was EXACTLY the same, it still didn't work and the help desk kept saying it was a temporary mess up. Keep in mind the airport still advertises itself as having free Wi-Fi which it should considering it's an international airport, It's so unbelievably stupid for it not to, even my small city airport here in Europe has free Wi-Fi. I went on google maps and checked the reviews for the place, recent reviews as in this last month claim that the airport STILL has no Wi-Fi so what the fuck is going on over at Jeddah? Is this incompetence? Are they trolling people on purpose?

2-The food court is laughably small. I don't know what Jeddah is going for with this new terminal... But if they're thinking of competing with Dubai airport they're not even close. The food court has a total of (or it did when I was there) 4 RESTAURANTS all essentially offering the same or similar food, What???? What kind of international airport is this? They claim to have 32 million passengers going through their airport yearly, and they can only fit 4 restaurants in their new terminal????? My small town shopping centre has more. Half of the food court is boarded up like a zombie apocalypse or something and the stores are laughably small and out in the open, it's like they built the damn thing to look pretty then thought of the food and stores as an afterthought

3-The airport security was extremely rude. When you're going through security checks they treat you like an inconvencience, it feels as if they hate their job and want to take it out on you for even daring to show your face on that airport. They'll look at you funny, yell over the slightest inconvenience and treat your stuff on the trays like it doesn't matter. Worst of all and this is true, when I was at the airport I met this guy from the Netherlands, he was a cool dude and we at first started talking about how the internet didn't seem to work but then we shifted to the security there. He told me he bought 2 bottles of whiskey in Amsterdam in a duty free shop in the airport before boarding the flight. The people at the airport in Amsterdam told him it was completely okay for him to bring them with him and placed it in a secure sealed bag. As soon as he arrives in Jeddah though, the airport security go through his stuff and tell him alcohol is illegal in Saudi Arabia, he tries to explain he's not going to Saudi Arabia, he's going to another country and is only there on a connecting flight, the security obviously didn't care and just confiscated his alcohol, laughing and making jokes as they did it. 40 Euros of alcohol thrown in the trash just like that, I say thrown in the trash but God only knows what they did with it.

All of this to say that out of all the major international airports, Jeddah is by far the worst, if emirates tickets weren't 2x more expensive than a Saudia ticket I would have never even stepped foot there. I'm going to Asia this year again, and although I don't like overspending on plane tickets since I like spending my money on the destination rather than the way to the destination, I think I might just eat the 2x cost from emirates and go to Dubai, anything that can get me to avoid going back to Jeddah, what do you guys think? Have you gone through the same thing?

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