Riyadh Air will soon begin its first commercial flights, with London taking inaugural honours on July 1 – but the Saudi start-up is already planning its push into Asia.
Manila, Bangkok, Jakarta, Kuala Lumpur, Mumbai and Lahore are all on the shortlist, according to a roster of slots held by the airline at its King Khalid International Airport hub and managed by Airport Coordination Limited.
Only some of these are expected to make the initial cut – and it’s possible they won’t see Riyadh Air’s eye-catching Boeing 787 Dreamliner until early 2027, as the airline’s first wave of destinations will focus on strategic cities in the UK, Europe and the Gulf region.
Riyadh Air’s Boeing 787s will be seen in two striking liveries.
These will include Manchester, Madrid, Dubai, Cairo, and Jeddah, with Riyadh Air planning to dovetail longer flights to a UK or European city with a shorter regional or domestic leg.
“We’ll be flying from Riyadh to, let’s say, ‘European capital A’ and back,” Riyadh Air CEO Tony Douglas told Executive Traveller ahead of the airline’s long-awaited launch.
“Then the airplane will turn around and do a shorter leg on thick routes within the region – to Jeddah, for example.”
“It will then come back to Riyadh, turn around and then do let’s say ‘European city B’, and so on.”
The airline hopes to average one new 787 delivery per month across the remainder of this year.
Riyadh Air’s 787 business class.
“The network builds out on every additional aircraft that arrives,” Douglas said. “Every time we get another plane, we’ll just increase the number of those cities.”
2027 will see “a drum-beat of deliveries” ramping up to two each month, Douglas says, “and by the time we get into 2028, we’re into some months of three deliveries a month.”
Douglas intends to leverage that steady flow of jets by adding an average of two destinations every month.
“Within the first five years you’ll then see pretty much every capital city within Europe, all the big capital cities within the Far East, most of the big capital cities within Central Asia, obviously within our own region of the Gulf, the Indian subcontinent for very obvious reasons as well, and the eastern seaboard of North America.”
Singapore is also expected to join Riyadh Air’s Asian footprint as part of the network’s second or third wave, although in the early stages Riyadh Air will be able to rely on partner Singapore Airlines, which is slated to launch Singapore–Riyadh flights later this year.