New Saudi carrier Riyadh Air to launch with London service
Heathrow flights are first step in ambitious plan to reach 100 destinations within five years
Saudi Arabia’s Riyadh Air will launch its first regular flights this month with a London route, the first step in a multibillion-dollar push by the fledgling carrier to compete with hugely successful Gulf rivals such as Emirates and Qatar.
The kingdom’s sovereign Public Investment Fund will invest “tens and tens and tens of billions” to build a “national carrier” with ambitious growth plans, chief executive Tony Douglas told the Financial Times.
The airline, which has 182 planes on order from Boeing and Airbus, aims to reach 100 destinations within five years.
Its expansion will form a crucial part of Saudi Arabia’s aim to become a major tourist destination and business hub, ahead of its hosting of the 2034 Fifa World Cup and the 2030 World Expo in Riyadh.
The launch of the carrier, which was commissioned three years ago by Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, has been heavily delayed by late aircraft deliveries from Boeing.
The airline expects to receive one new plane a month from the US manufacturer for the next year, after which it will also begin taking deliveries from Airbus.
The flights from the Saudi capital to London Heathrow will run daily from October 26.
Tickets will initially only be available to airline or PIF staff and their families, while the first flights will be on the airline’s “technical spares” plane, before the delivery of its first fully commissioned Boeing jet.
A second route, to Dubai, would open about a month later using the technical spares plane, once the new aircraft was available for the London route, Douglas said.
The early flights will help the company make any tweaks needed before selling tickets to the general public from the start of next year. It expects to open new routes as it receives more planes.
The airline has 72 Boeing 787 Dreamliners on order, along with Airbus A320 Neos that it will start receiving next November, and longer-range Airbus A350 1000s.
The group plans in time to fly to other hub airports — such as Atlanta or Singapore — and has struck deals with 10 airlines including Delta, Turkish, Singapore Airways, and Virgin Atlantic to fly passengers onwards towards other destinations.
It also aims to provide direct services from Riyadh to major world cities.
“Our connectivity today isn’t good enough,” Douglas said. “If you look at Tokyo, Seoul, Shanghai, Sydney, those global cities aren’t directly connected” to Saudi Arabia. “That’s simply unacceptable.”
Douglas, who has previously stated that the airline did not aim to compete directly with other Gulf hubs such as Dubai and Doha, said taking some traffic from them was inevitable.
“If a resident of Saudi wants to get to other cities, they have to go to Doha or Dubai or somewhere else, to connect on to it,” he said. “That will change.”
While the company has not published the order in which routes will be added, it will be unable to provide the longest flights, such as to the US west coast, until it receives Airbus A350 1000s that are due to be delivered in 2027.
Douglas said the company aimed to be profitable and deliver “acceptable returns over time”.