Saudia set to move out of Riyadh to make room for new airline

Saudi Arabia’s flag carrier will gradually move out of Riyadh’s airport to make room for the kingdom’s newest airline, allowing it to focus on its primary hub in Jeddah.

Saudia, which currently operates from both cities, will hand over slots to brand-new Riyadh Air that is due to begin operations in 2025, General Authority of Civil Aviation’s Vice President of Strategy Mohammed Alkhuraisi said. 

“You don’t want two big carriers to operate out of the same hub,” said Alkhuraisi in an interview. Riyadh Air will take over slots from Saudia in a “synchronized manner” to ensure capacity and connectivity to the Saudi capital is not impacted, he said. 

Saudia will instead expand operations in Madinah, one of the most sacred cities in Islam and a main religious tourism site, where the airport is set to undergo an expansion that will double capacity to 17 million passengers, Alkhuraisi said. 

Saudia is being repositioned to focus on religious pilgrims, while Riyadh Air will be targeted at tourists, and will compete with larger Gulf carriers for transfer traffic. 

About 112 million passengers traveled through the kingdom’s airports, marking record air traffic for Saudi Arabia in 2023. That was up 26% from a year earlier and exceeded arrivals during the same period in 2019, before the pandemic grounded airlines across the world, GACA said.  

Bloomberg News reported this month that the ownership of Jeddah-based Saudia could be transferred to the Public Investment Fund as soon as next year. PIF already owns Riyadh Air.