In the 80s I lived in Dhahran, Saudi Arabia, and that airport was alive with activity from about 9 p.m. to 3 a.m. because of the international arrivals and departures to and from elsewhere in Asia, Europe and North America. It was quite typical for one person in the flying party to go to the airport early in the evening to beat the rush and check bags, etc., and then come home again with boarding passes, etc. (Those of you who have spent time in the Middle East know that queues and crowd control is a foreign concept. You want to avoid the rush if at all possible.) The whole family would then go to the airport closer to the departure time.

I only flew in and out of the Dhahran airport 5 times during daylight hours...one RT domestic, one RT to Bahrain, and one charter flight from the US. To this day, part of me wants to believe that the airport doesn't operate daytime flights (I'm kidding, of course.)