The world’s tallest building will have planes going past below the top floor

The world’s tallest building is going up in Saudi Arabia, and it sits only 3.52 miles from an airport runway.

Jeddah Tower has been under construction off and on since 2013. Work stopped in 2018 around the 63rd floor, then started again in January 2025 with Saudi Binladin Group back as the contractor. It passed the 100th floor this spring. When it’s finished — 2028 is the target — it will stand over 1,000 meters, a little past 3,300 feet. That’s the first building ever to hit a full kilometer, and about 590 feet taller than the Burj Khalifa’s 2,717.

Adrian Smith + Gordon Gill designed it. They’re in Chicago. Of course they are.

Jeddah Tower overlooks the Red Sea. I found that curious, so I looked up where it would be.

Yup. It’s right by the Red Sea. So here’s my question. Since the building is so tall, can it look OVER the Red Sea and see Sudan on the other side?

Can you see Africa from the world’s tallest building?

Nope. Sudan stays hidden. Here’s the math: the horizon distance in miles is roughly 1.22 times the square root of your height in feet. The square root of 3,300 is 57.45. That’s 70 miles. Bend the light a little for atmospheric refraction and you get maybe 76. I measured the Red Sea at that spot at 132 miles across.

So you’d need to be almost twice as high. The globe wins.

The airport is right there

The other curious thing is that King Abdulaziz International Airport sits practically next door. On the map it looks super close. Google Maps says it’s a 32-minute drive — 30.4 km (18.8 miles). But that has you winding all around on the roads.

I wanted the straight line instead. I figured Google Maps only did driving distances. ACTUALLY, it does straight lines too. Today I learned there’s a manual distance tool where you drag two points and it gives you the line between them.

How to get direct distances in Google Maps

1. Right-click on your starting point. (On mobile, tap and hold.)
2. A menu opens. Select “Measure distance.”
3. Click your end point to drop a second dot.

That’s it. Google draws the line and gives you the number.

3.52 miles from Jeddah Tower to the nearest runway.

For comparison, I measured Chicago. Willis Tower — 1,451 feet, the world’s tallest building for 25 years — is exactly 14.0 miles from O’Hare.

Which makes 3.52 miles seem kinda close. But here’s the curious part…

At 3.52 miles out, how high is the airplane?

I’m not a pilot, so I asked Google AI. Landing, a plane 3.52 miles from the runway is on a 3-degree glide path at roughly 1,000 feet. Taking off, it’s climbing at 2,000 to 3,000 feet per minute and would be somewhere around 2,500 to 4,000 feet.

Compare those two numbers against 3,300 feet (the height of Jeddah Tower).

A plane coming in to land will pass Jeddah Tower at about a third of the way up the building. Not near the top. A third of the way up. And a plane taking off will be roughly eye-level with the very top floor, give or take a few hundred feet.

In case you missed that. When an airplane passes by Jeddah Tower, it will be LOWER than the tower. That is going to be freaky for people living/working in Jeddah Tower seeing airplanes pass by at eye level of their floor.

What will that sound like?

The U.S. government publishes noise maps for airports, and they’re kinda fascinating to look at. They draw outlines based on a 65 DNL threshold — Day-Night Average Sound Level. The FAA calls 65 DNL the line where noise becomes “significant” and is no longer compatible with normal residential use without special mitigation.

Which airport to compare? I figure King Abdulaziz won’t be as busy as O’Hare, so I grabbed Midway instead. In the 1980s, I went to church and grade school 2.7 miles from Midway Airport. (Remember, Jeddah Tower is 3.52 miles from the airport)

I took Midway’s official noise map, set it next to King Abdulaziz, and drew a roughly equivalent noise outline around it.

Jeddah Tower lands in about the same spot on the noise map as my old church and grade school. I don’t remember ever being distracted by planes overhead. But then again, I didn’t go to school 3,000 feet up in the air.

Update

• King Abdulaziz Airport handles about 30 million passengers annually.
• O’Hare Airport does 85 million.
• Midway Airport does 3 million.

So, um, yeah, King Abdulaziz Airport is TEN times busier than Midway. O’Hare might be a better comparison than Midway. +Pulling O’Hare’s noise map+

The current outlines for O’Hare look a bit larger than Midway’s. (The older outlines are HUMONGOUS! They must have figured out how to lower the noise significantly since 1979). I drew a new map for Jeddah’s airport with the outline being a bit larger to match to the scale of O’Hare’s current noise levels.