Saudi LCC flyadeal to enter India next year with 4-5 destinations

Saudi Arabian low-cost airline flyadeal will launch operations into India with “four to five” destinations in 2026, said CEO Steven Greenway, while highlighting the need to curb the diversion of traffic through third-country hubs like Dubai and Doha.

“We would have liked to have been here earlier, if not for aircraft delivery delays plaguing the industry,” Mr. Greenway told The Hindu in an exclusive interview.

The airline will be flying to India from all its four bases — Riyadh, Jeddah, Dammam and Medina — the last of which will be opened early next year.

Launched in 2017, flyadeal is the sister airline of full-service national carrier Saudia. Both airlines are under the umbrella ownership of Saudi Arabian Airlines Corporation, which is fully owned by the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. .

India will be flyadeal’s third destination in South Asia after Pakistan and Bangladesh. The airline will also launch flights to Indonesia next week, and to Malaysia in December.

Representational image of a flyadeal aircraft taking off
| Photo Credit:
Special arrangement

The airline’s route network was thus far primarily domestic, apart from 14 destinations across Jordan, Egypt, Syria, UAE and Turkey.

The CEO says that while until last year only 20% of the network was international, going forward “most of our growth will be international”, which will grow to 50% of the network.

Saudia 2030 vision

The network expansion is part of Saudia 2030 Vision, which is Saudi Arabia’s ambitious plan to diversify its economy beyond oil and create expanded opportunities for its citizens and position the country as a tourist hub. A flagship initiative of this vision is also the launch of Riyadh Air, a brand new airline to boost the Kingdom’s tourism and aviation sectors which inaugurated its maiden flight between Riyadh and London on October 26

To a question on whether there were demands for more seats Saudi carriers could fly into India and access to more destinations, he echoed India’s demands for curtailing the movement of passengers through hubs such as Dubai and Doha to support local airlines.

“Other carriers from other nations have been taking our customers from each country and routing them through a third country. We’re not saying it should stop, but we should get our fair share in terms of direct traffic going between both countries,” Greenway underlined while referring to hubs such as Doha and Dubai, which he said proliferated on the back of weak carriers in both India and Saudia Arabia in the past.

Focus on direct travel

His airline though is focused on direct air travel between India and Saudi Arabia with some traffic connecting to Saudia’s long haul flights, as well as the brand new Riyadh Air.

The airline’s focus in India would be to target labour traffic as well as pilgrims headed to Mecca. On its radar are secondary airports, beyond the metros of Delhi and Mumbai and open up India to Saudia Arabia, which has three million Indians.

While Saudia will develop Jeddah as its hub over the next 4-5 years, flyadeal’s main hub will be Riyadh, from where it will feed traffic to the former and allow passengers to connect onwards to the full-service carrier’s network across Africa, Europe or North America. The two airlines will optimise their schedule to offer connections to Indian travellers, the CEO explained.

Regarding partnerships planned with the fledgling Riyadh Air, the CEO said that while no discussions had yet taken place, as the airline was focused on starting up operations, there was potential for allowing Riyadh Air to plug into its domestic network and secondary airports overseas.

flyadeal has a fleet of 42 A320s. Last year it placed an order of 51 aircraft, which includes larger A321 neo aircraft, which Mr. Greenway said will allow the airline to fly to the eastern coast of India.

The airline has also announced plans for long-haul operations with phased induction of 10 Airbus starting from 2027 over a period of three years, and the CEO is hopeful of more widebodies.

“We’d love to see if we can extend that order,” he said. With the first 10 though, its focus will be primarily South East Asia and western parts of Europe.