50 aircraft boost domestic services

Saudi Arabian Airlines has beefed up its domestic fleet by allocating 50 aircraft in order to meet growing passenger requirements as well as the Kingdom’s development needs, said its Director General, Khaled Al-Molhem.

“We are planning to increase the number of domestic flights further making use of the airline’s available capacity,” said Al-Molhem who recently inspected the airline’s offices in Jazan, Abha, Najran and Tabuk.
He emphasized the need for licensing more operators in the domestic sector to compete with the national carrier.
The General Authority of Civil Aviation has already licensed Qatar Airways and Gulf Air to operate domestic flights between the Kingdom’s airports and the two Gulf airlines are likely to begin their services shortly.
“Sama and Nas airlines entered the Kingdom’s aviation market, but we have seen huge demand for Saudia flights. We believe that the presence of more companies will give customers opportunities to see the high standard achieved by the national carrier over the past years,” he told Al-Eqtisadiah, a sister publication of Arab News.
Al-Molhem expected that the number of domestic passengers would cross 25 million by 2020 with Saudia targeting 22 million. “We’ll work with authorities to find short-medium and long term solutions to meet the demand of these growing numbers of passengers.”
During a board meeting, Prince Fahd bin Abdullah, chairman of Saudia, called for greater efforts to improve the airline’s operational performance by providing more seats to meet the requirements of domestic and international passengers.