Saudi LCC Flyadeal to enter India next year with 4-5 destinations

Saudi Arabian low-cost airline Flyadeal will launch operations into India with “four to five” destinations in the first 12 months of 2026, according to its CEO Steven Greenway.

“We would have liked to have been here earlier, if not for aircraft delivery delays been plaguing the industry,” Mr. Greenway told The Hindu in an exclusive interview.  

The airline will be flying to India from all its four hubs, ie Riyadh, Jeddah, Dammam and Medina- the last of which will be opened early next month.

Launched in 2017, Flyadeal is the sister airline of full-service national carrier Saudia. Both airlines are under the umbrella ownership of Saudi Arabian Airlines Corporation, which is fully owned by the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia.

India will be its third destination in South Asia after Pakistan and Bangladesh. The airline will also launch flights to Indonesia next week, and to Malaysia in December. 

The airline’s route network was thus far primarily domestic, apart from 14 destinations across Jordan, Egypt, Syria, UAE and Turkey.

The network expansion comes at a time Saudi Arabia has unveiled Saudia 2030 Vision, an ambitious plan to diversify its economy beyond oil and create expanded opportunities for its citizens and position the country as a tourist hub. A flagship initiative of this vision is also the launch of Riyadh Air , a brand new airline to boost the Kingdom’s tourism and aviation sectors, which inaugurated its maiden flight between Riyadh and London on October 26.

The CEO says that while until last year only 20% of the network was international, going forward “most of our growth will be international”, which will grow to 50% of the network.

To a question on whether there were demands for more seats Saudi carriers could fly into India and access to more destinations, he echoed India’s demands for curtailing movement of passengers through hubs such as Dubai and Doha in order to support local airlines.

“Other carriers from other nations have been taking our customers from each country and routing them through a third country. We’re not saying it should stop, but we should get our fair share in terms of direct traffic going between both countries,” Greenway asserted, adding that the airline was focused on point-to-point traffic,ie serving passengers traveling directly between India and Saudi Arabia in both directions.For its India launch next year though, Saudia will be transferring its seat quota to Flyadeal.