Riyadh – Mubasher: Chief Commercial Officer at Riyadh Air, Vincent Coste, told Mubasher in an interview during the Future Aviation Forum 2024, which is taking place in the capital of Saudi Arabia for three days.

Coste stated: “We are actively working right now on designing a network for 2025, so I cannot disclose yet the destinations we’ll operate but not surprisingly this will be where Riyadh and the rest of the world lack connectivity today, in Europe, Asia, the US, and in the region.”

For the work in progress, the official noted that the first flight of next year’s network will take place at the end of February 2025.

He added:  “We will open two destinations every month from mid-2025 to the end of 2030. This is a very very rapid growth until 2030 where we’ll operate roughly more than 100 destinations.”

When it comes to aircraft, Coste said that the first deliveries will take place during the first half (H1) of 2025, adding “and then we’ll have a delivery book of 72 aircraft from mid-2025 to the end of 2030.” He noted that this will allow Riyadh Air to open destinations basically on a monthly basis, to reach up to 100 destinations by 2030.

The official concluded: “A very interesting thing is when we opened a website after the announcement of the airline in March 2023, we had over 1 million applications on the website where people had to leave their CVs.”

He stated that the airline company will “give a very strong focus on the Saudi talents because we are a Saudi airlines and we will create by 2030 roughly 200,000 direct and indirect jobs in the Kingdom; a massive impact on the employment ecosystem.” 

Riyadh Air, which is wholly owned by Saudi Arabia's Public Investment Fund (PIF), aims at adding $20 billion to non-oil gross domestic product (GDP) growth.