Saudi Arabia aiming for tenfold increase in air transit traffic by 2030

By Alexander Cornwell

DUBAI (Reuters) – Saudi Arabia is focusing on a tenfold raise in intercontinental airline passengers transiting the kingdom by the end of the decade as it seems to triple yearly passenger traffic, an official stated.

The govt previous calendar year declared strategies to come to be a global transportation and logistics hub by 2030 concentrating on passenger targeted visitors of 330 million a yr, nevertheless couple of particulars have emerged.

The system phone calls for 500 billion riyal ($133.32 billion) in expenditure and is component an financial plan to generate jobs and wean the region off oil profits.

That policy, which has viewed the government mandate that companies move their regional headquarters to the kingdom, puts Saudi Arabia in opposition with neighbour the United Arab Emirates, exactly where airline Emirates’ key small business product is transit targeted traffic.

Saudi Arabia’s key goal is to raise the number of arrivals to the kingdom, explained Mohammed Alkhuraisi, head of system at the Standard Authority of Civil Aviation.

“We are not immediately after the transit industry,” he explained to Reuters.

The authorities wants direct intercontinental flights to increase to 250 for 99, in element to enhance a nascent tourism sector but also to acquire the kingdom into a big industrial centre.

A tenfold boost would indicate intercontinental transit targeted visitors jumps to 30 million in 2030 from about 3 million in 2019, or 10% of Saudi Arabia’s annual passenger visitors, up from 3%.

Emirates carried additional than 56 million passengers in the yr right before the pandemic, though Qatar Airways, which also targets transiting targeted visitors, flew more than 32 million.

Compared with Saudi Arabia, a nation of some 30 million men and women, there is no domestic aviation marketplace in the UAE or in Qatar.

Some analysts argue there is house in the Gulf to contend for transit website traffic, notably after Abu Dhabi’s Etihad Airways has scaled again its ambitions in modern many years.

Other folks are sceptical, in part, because of to the affect of the COVID-19 pandemic on the world wide vacation field but also because of Etihad’s difficulties even with its wealthy point out backing.

Tale continues

Saudi Arabia also aims to boost yearly air cargo volumes to 4.5 million by 2030 from 900,000 tonnes in 2019 , of which Alkhuraisi stated fifty percent would be transiting somewhere else.

Saudi Arabia is environment up a new airline to be based mostly in the money Riyadh, even though 77-calendar year-previous condition airline Saudia will be primarily based out of the Red Sea town Jeddah beneath the transportation tactic that calls for the institution for the two hubs.

It is unclear when the new carrier, owned by the Public Expenditure Fund (PIF), will commence functions, nevertheless resources have stated it would compete with the UAE and Qatari carriers.

Alkhuraisi deferred queries on the airline to the PIF.

($1 = 3.7503 riyals)

(Reporting by Alexander Cornwell editing by Jason Neely)