Saudi Arabia’s Flyadeal, the Kingdom’s largest low-cost carrier, aims to treble its fleet by 2030.
From the 32 aircraft expected to be in service at the end of 2023, “By 2030 we plan to be a 100-aircraft airline,” said Con Korfiatis, the Jeddah-based carrier’s Australian Chief Executive. Most new arrivals will be narrowbodies, but later in the decade the LCC will look to add a small sub-fleet of widebodies.
Flyadeal was founded in 2016 as a subsidiary of the Saudia Group and a sister company of national carrier Saudia, and began operations in 2017. Apart from a lull during the pandemic, Korfiatis has overseen rapid growth at Flyadeal and expects almost nine million passengers this year.
Much of Flyadeal’s focus to date has been establishing a local network from its three largest bases in Riyadh, Jeddah and Dammam. The carrier has worked longer than expected on its domestic build-up because “we found such a big appetite for the low-cost product in Saudi Arabia,” said Korfiatis.
This saw Flyadeal delaying its international launch, but overseas services began to be added in 2022 and this year has seen the network mushroom.
Over the past year the airline has added destinations such as Dubai, Cairo, Istanbul, Amman and Kuwait City, and in March it announced further expansion with 12 routes to European and regional destinations. This represents a 127% capacity increase in seasonal capacity compared to summer 2022.
Flyadeal’s new-generation Airbus narrowbodies have the range to reach northern Europe, most of Africa, all the Gulf region, across to south Asia, and to Pakistan and India in the east.
