A Qatar Airways aircraft will fly from Doha International Airport (DIA) to Hamad International Airport (HIA) tomorrow, marking the soft opening of the new facility. Qatar Airways will thus become the first airline to touch down at Qatar’s brand-new airport. The inaugural flight will take off a few minutes ahead of its scheduled arrival at the new airport at 12.20am on Sunday, sources told Qatar Chronicle.. Ten airlines that don’t require the lounge facility will begin their operations from the new airport following the arrival of the first flight. The airlines which will move to the new facility tomorrow are Air Arabia, Air India Express, Biman Bangladesh Airlines, flydubai, Iran Air, Nepal Airlines, Pakistan International Airlines, RAK Airways, Syrian Air and Yemen Airways. Abdul Aziz Al Noaimi, Chairman of Qatar Civil Aviation Authority, who also heads the steering committee of the new airport ,said HIA was all set to receive passengers and visitors. Travellers will enter the passenger terminal complex from the east side and go directly to the check-in counters. After check-in, immigration and security checks, passengers will be directed to concourse B. Passengers departing and arriving will board and exit aircraft via an air bridge. Parking will be available at the eastern side of the short-term car park in front of the passenger terminal complex. From the car park, passengers will be able to enter the passenger terminal complex through the eastern link bridge connected to the parking facility. The taxi pick-up point is located on the arrivals floor on the left side when exiting the terminal and the limousine service is available on the right side. Across the road from the arrivals floor there is a pick-up point for private cars. Arriving and departing passengers can use a shuttle bus service that will operate from HIA to the DIA departures terminal and from DIA to HIA. Initially, HIA will have a handling capacity of some 28 million passengers a year, increasing to 50 million in its final phase of development beyond 2015. Cargo operations and freighter flights are expected to move from DIA to HIA soon. Qatar Airways will move its entire operations to the new airport by the year-end. Source :Qatar Chronicle

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