Agencies
Riyadh
The Saudi Arabian Public Investment Fund (PIF) announced it will launch a second national airline, Riyadh Air. The carrier will be chaired by former Etihad Airways CEO Tony Douglas and has ambitious growth plans with a fleet that includes Boeing 787-9s.
PIF said Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman bin Abdulaziz announced the establishment. Like Saudia and its subsidiaries, the new airline will also be wholly owned by the state. To be based in Riyadh, “the new national carrier will leverage Saudi Arabia’s strategic geographic location between the three continents of Asia, Africa, and Europe, enabling Riyadh to become a gateway to the world and a global destination for transportation, trade, and tourism.”
The airline plans to grow a network that will include 100 destinations. Under its Vision 2030, Saudi has bold ambitions to attract 300 million visitors, which is tenfold the number Saudia carried in 2019. Riyadh Air is supposed to add $20 billion in non-oil GDP to the Saudi economy and create more than 200.000 direct and indirect jobs.
Rumors have been around for over two years that the government was planning to establish a second airline next to Saudia. Soon after he announced that he would depart Etihad in October, Tony Douglas was linked to RIA as its CEO, but only recently there were reports that he had quit the start-up again.
Douglas has now indeed been confirmed as CEO of Riyadh Air. He will lead a management team of Saudi nationals and others with backgrounds in international carriers. The airline will be chaired by Yasir Al-Rumayyan, who is also the governor of PIF.
Expect Riyadh Air to announce its short and long-term fleet plans anytime soon, but the Boeing 787-9 is firmly on its shopping list. According to The Wall Street Journal, the new airline is close to signing an agreement with Boeing for aircraft, valued at $ 35 billion, but Saudi Arabia has been in talks with Airbus too about an A350 order.
The airline has already restarted recruiting Captains for the type but doesn’t say when it expects to be ready to launch its first services. RIA intended to launch short-haul services first with a limited fleet of narrowbodies before adding widebody capacity. In July 2022, another PIF vehicle, AviLease, announced that it was entering the aircraft leasing market.
