Khamis Mushait

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Province	Asir
Khamis Mushait خـميــس مشيـــط
Suburbs of Khamis Mushait
Government
- Prince	Khalid Al-Faisal
Population (2004)
- City	446,467
Time zone	GMT +3 (UTC+3)

Khamis Mushait (Arabic: خميس مشيط Khamis Mushait) is a city in south-west Saudi Arabia, located 35 minutes east of Abha, the provincial seat of the Asir province in southwest Saudi Arabia. Until the 1960's Khamis Mushait was a small town of less than 50,000 servicing the surrounding mild-climate agricultural region. Since then its population has grown eight-fold to reach 446,467 (2004 census). The city used to be the capital of Shahrani tribe, one of the biggest tribes in Arabia, nowadays, the tribe populate almost 70% of the grown city. The city's name comes from the weekly market that is held each Thursday, and "Khamis" simply is the arabic word for Thursday. Whereas the word "Mushait" refers to the leading family of Shahran tribe, and the current Mayor of Khamis Mushait is Saeed bin Abdulaziz bin Mushait.

[edit] Airport and air base

Commercial air service to Khamis Mushait is via the Abha Regional Airport, located 35 minutes west of Khamis Mushayt proper. Multiple daily flights are operated to Abha from Jeddah, Dammam, and Riyadh by Saudi Arabian Airlines.

King Khalid Air Base (KMX) has a 12,400ft paved runway without customs facilities[1]. The base was designed and built by US Army and Air Force engineers in the 1960s and 70s[2].

Khamis Mushait is one of the 6 main Saudi Air Force bases (the others being Taif, Jeddah, Dhahran, Riyadh and Tabuk). At Khamis Mushait are F-15C/D, F-15S (a slightly downgraded F-15E strike variant[3]), Tornado IDS, F-5 (The F-5 aircraft were removed from KKAB in the late 80s and transferred to Riyadh). AH64 Apache helicopters and Blackhawks were based here for training and servicing in support of the armour and artillery schools at the King Khalid Military City close by[4].

During the Gulf War of 1990, US F-117A aircraft were based in Khamis Mushait[5][6]. At that time, they flew from Khamis Mushait directly to Baghdad or beyond and back to Khamis Mushayt.