The aviation world’s eyes are trained on Saudi Arabia which has made air travel and tourism the key pillar of its economic transformation under the Vision 2030, and on Tuesday its aviation regulator announced plans for a yet another airline.
Saudi Arab’s aviation safety watchdog General Authority of Civil Aviation’s Executive Vice President Ali Rajab said it would bring out a tender for a budget carrier based in Medina “in a few months”. He was addressing a conference at Dubai Airshow 2025.
The Kingdom has already launched a new flagship carrier in Riyadh Air which commenced its first flight with daily service between Riyadh and London last month. In July, GACA announced that Air Arabia will launch a low cost airline based in Dammam with a fleet of 45 planes to be ready by 2030.
“The transformation that is taking place in Saudi Arabia’s aviation sector is unmatched,” said Rajab as he enumerated plans to connect the Kingdom with 250 destinations, triple the number of passengers and establish it as a cargo and logistic hub.
To achieve these goals Saudi Arabia will enable more than $100 billion public and private investments.
The various airlines of Saudi Arabia have more than 500 aircraft on order, which includes budget carrier flyadeal’s plans to expand to more than 100 aircraft from its current 45 aircraft fleet.
These plans reflected “the impressive growth of low cost carrier segment to meet Saudi market demand,” said the GACA official.
On the airport side, there are new master plans for Riyadh and Jeddah to develop a 100 million passenger mega hub.
“These projects are not just built on optimistic hopes. They are essential to meet the real growth that is happening now. In the last three quarters of this year passengers grew by 9%, reaching 103 million passengers. The (airlines of the) Kingdom now carry 25% more passengers than pre-pandemic, one of the highest growth rates in the world,” he highlighted.
But challenges remain, including delays in aircraft deliveries, staff shortages across all skilled aviation areas and IT outages and disruption posed by Artificial Intelligence.
The top authority made an appeal to investors at the Airshow and said that GACA was enabling privatisation of its airports, bringing out a new economic regulation to encourage competition and private sector participation, launching a general aviation strategy and a roadmap for air mobility.
“Companies across the Kingdom were undertaking expansion of equipment orders and commercial partnership to enable Saudi Arabia to connect the world,” he announced to the participants of the Dubai Airshow.
[The journalist is in Dubai on the invitation of flydubai]
Published – November 18, 2025 10:14 pm IST
