The airline's CEO Tony Douglas outlines his airline's mission and its next milestones.
The fuselage of Riyadh Air’s newly-painted Boeing 787 Dreamliner. (Photo: Riyadh Air)
The tale of made-from-scratch carrier Riyadh Air, a new would-be global carrier made in Saudi Arabia that is planning to take commercial aviation by storm courtesy of the Public Investment Fund’s checkbook, has undoubtedly been one of the most fascinating of 2024.
The airline made a big splash last year by ordering 39 brand-new Boeing 787-9 aircraft, with 33 more options for the same model, and more recently wowed the world with its purple livery, but so far this potential disruptor of the skies is still very much a paper airline since there is only one aircraft, which is currently performing certification flights to obtain the Air Operator’s Certificate (AOC).
At the Routes World Conference 2024 in Bahrain, Riyadh Air’s CEO Tony Douglas was one of the most awaited keynote speakers and, in line with the tradition and ambition of the carrier, made some bold statements about the near and not-so-near future. After all, that’s all he can do for now.
“We believe Riyadh Air will have an AOC by the end of the year,” said Douglas, setting a long-awaited milestone that will see a wild concept turn into a proper airline. Although Riyadh Air does not define itself as an airline: “We have the opportunity to start from a blank sheet of paper, and this is a gift,” explained Douglas to a full house of delegates at Routes World 2024.”And instead of being the latest airline to do things ‘the old way,’ we want to embrace the chance to be the first airline to develop in the digital age.”
“Our vision is to be a digitally-led business that enables travel, and we are doing so through an obsessive attention to detail and customer service, by being digitally native and by being a leader in environmental sustainability.”
The airline already has its IATA code (RX) and has just moved into its new headquarters next to Riyadh International Airport. By the end of October, version 1.0 of Riyadh Air’s digital interface will be revealed at the Future Investment Initiative flagship conference in the Saudi Arabian capital. “It will be an iPhone-type of launch, we want the experience of our purchasing a flight through our interface to be similar to buying goods on Amazon,” said Douglas, adding that every announcement will be as grand as it can be.
Right now, a lot of energy is going towards building the brand; and while the flying part of the business is not yet here, there is time to use some of that blank sheet of paper to design a very strong brand. The sound for Riyadh Air has just been recorded in the Abbey Road studio in London, where the Saudi Philharmonic Orchestra and the London Philharmonic Orchestra have performed together to create a very distinctive tune that will be instantly recognizable. Or at least so they say.
“Riyadh Air will always stand out,” proclaimed Douglas. “Our livery will stand out on the apron, our crew uniforms will stand out at airports or hotels, just like the Pan Am uniforms used to stand out, our online experience will be truly Riyadh Air, just like our music. We will always stand out.”
Riyadh Air’s first 787 (Photo: Riyadh Air)
With an AOC on its way hopefully by the end of 2024, the announcement for the first 25 destinations will follow shortly at the beginning of 2025, with the start of operations to be penciled in by the end of the same year. “We have changed the timeline for Riyadh Air three times, but for Saudi Arabia our launch could not come early enough. Saudi Arabia is the fastest-growing economy of the G20 group, and it has very little air connectivity. And this hurts the economy: there are no direct flights to Tokyo, to Seoul, to Shanghai, the entire Asia is underserved. We don’t have to create a market, the market is already there.”
The launch will take place with the Boeing 787-9s on order, and it will focus on balancing a network through long connections to Europe and shorter flights to India, in order to keep the utilization high and offset the advantage of starting services with very large aircraft.
A new order for narrowbody aircraft will follow in due course and it will be of a similar size to the one placed for the Boeing 787s. With narrowbodies starting to go online as of the second year of operations, the network will become more diversified and it will be possible to more closely match capacity with demand. The vision is to have 100 destinations served after five years.
As aircraft availability is one of the problems all airlines have to face, Riyadh has decided to sign some partnerships to help the carrier achieve a global scale more quickly. The first partners will be Star Alliance carriers Turkish Airlines and Singapore Airlines, then there is the landmark agreement signed with Delta.
“At the moment we have no desire to cover Australia,” explained Douglas. “That’s why it was important to have an agreement with Singapore Airlines that can help us do that. The same logic goes for the partnership with Delta Air Lines, since the United States is a market we won’t be able to serve directly for some time.”
With Riyadh Air wanting to maintain its digitally-native ethos, partnerships will require a lot of “translations” to make sure the information needed by “analog carriers” to carry RX’s passengers is transmitted in a digestible manner. The airline industry is currently undergoing a landmark project led by IATA (International Air Transport Association) called ONE Order.
The industry has never departed from the legacy concepts of “tickets” and “reservations” that were created in the 1950s when financial transactions and seat inventories had to be managed in very different manners. Nowadays the world has changed, computers are much more powerful and the need for that distinction does not exist any longer. For this reason, the industry is embarking on a project to make sure it can similarly sell its products and services to what other industries do.
Delta Air Lines and Riyadh Air announced a new partnership on July 9, 2024 (Photo: Delta Air Lines)
It appears Riyadh Air has decided to be a pioneer in this manner, which could lead to a sustainable competitive advantage should they manage to appeal to the digitally-native Gen Z, but could also cause interoperability issues with their partners and, if not managed properly, could lead to a “Galapagos effect” that could prove problematic a few years down the road.
No good brand these days can afford to leave sustainability off its mission statement, and Riyadh Air is no exception. The existential crisis the airline industry is facing with its quest for net-zero emissions by 2050 is a problem every airline CEO is keen to discuss: “We have seventeen initiatives to ensure the sustainability of our operations, and all these initiatives are tracked and measured. There is no silver bullet to achieve the 2050 target, and good ideas come in all shapes and sizes. We want to make sure all our operation is built with sustainability in mind.”
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