Saudia plans to expand fleet to 200 by 2020

Saudi Arabian Airlines (Saudia) plans to increase its fleet strength from 147 aircraft at present to 200 jetliners by 2020, as part of its expansion strategy, a senior airline executive told CNN.

“We are building on the strength of the Saudi market, the Saudi economy is growing, there’s a lot of growth internally, plus there is an ambitious plan to grow the religious tourism to Saudi Arabia and we are targeting 30 million pilgrims by 2030,” said Saleh Al Jasser, director general of Saudia.

Commenting on the airline’s strategy on increasing international visitors, Al Jasser said three major initiatives will be a game changer for the transportation industry in the Kingdom.

“One is the infrastructure, and the most important for us it the opening of the new jet terminal. Second, is the enhancement and simplification of the visa process. Third, is the top five programme that we are launching within the airline to improve the service end-to-end,” he added.

Highlighting the performance of its new low-cost carrier, Flyadeal, Al Jasser, said: “We’ve launched Flyadeal our low-cost carrier, during our last national day on September 23, 2017, it was a very strong start. Today Flyadeal operates 44 flights a day to seven cities within Saudi Arabia.”

Flyadeal will start flying to Tabuk on May 3, he said, adding, the airline will continue to expand gradually. The carrier aims to expand the domestic and reginal traffic.

The director-general praised the government's decision to revamp 20 of 27 regional Saudi airports, including the allocated $7 billion on Jeddah airport. 

The move is part of the government’s initiative to develop its tourism industry, in line with Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman’s Vision 2030 economic diversification plan.

“Absolutely, there is a huge investment ongoing. There is the vision aligning everybody to work to one objective creating a lot of momentum.

“In terms of the infrastructure, Jeddah Terminal is the most important for us but also there are 20 other airports being revamped, as you know, Saudi Airlines serves 27 domestic airports every day.”

On Saudia’s business outlook, Al Jasser said the national airline was “very optimistic” about emerging as one of the top 5-star carriers in the future.

"We started two years ago to revamp the whole airline, we are changing the service, we are improving the product, we are enhancing all activities and we just launched a new and much more ambitious initiative to be ranked one of the five-star airlines in the world by the end of 2019," he said.