TEL Aviv _ Agencies
The Israeli Ministry of Transport announced Tuesday that a new airport will be inaugurated on January 21 January in southern Israel near the Red Sea.
Israeli Minister of Transport, Israel Katz, said in a statement that Ramon´s airport would initially be used for domestic flights, and would later receive international commercial flights, without giving a date for the arrival of the first flights.
The airport, located about 18 km from the resort "Eilat " near the Jordanian port of Aqaba, will be able to receive up to 2 million passengers annually and up to 2.4 million people by 2030, according to the official website of the airport.
The inauguration ceremony will be held on 21 January in the presence of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, according to the Ministry of Transport.
The cost of building the airport, which began in 2013, was estimated at 1.7 billion shekels (€395 billion).
Israel aspires to make the Negev desert and the seaside resorts of the Red Sea important tourist sites.
The authorities announced a few months ago that Ramon Airport would replace the airport "Ovda", 60 km from "Eilat ", which was originally a military airfield and was supposed to be again.
The new airport was called "Ramon " In memory of the Israeli astronaut Ilan Ramon, who was killed in the 2003 Colombian spacecraft explosion and the memory of his son Assaf, the commander of a military plane killed in 2009 during a training exercise.
