Riyadh Air will tease and reveal in the next two years |

Riyadh Air is still busy with a sales campaign for narrowbody aircraft and will not make any order announcements at this week’s Paris Airshow. When the start-up carrier of Saudi Arabia will be ready and how many aircraft it intends to order is something that CEO Tony Douglas is unwilling to share right now. But more updates about the new airline will come. Riyadh Air will tease and reveal in the next two years. Douglas held a media briefing in a plush hotel at Place de la Concorde in Paris on the eve of the airshow, which kicks off officially on Monday morning. After announcing the launch of Riyadh Air on March 12 and the 787 order for 72 aircraft including options, Douglas has not spoken to that many international aviation reporters as of Sunday evening. Speaking about the narrowbody order, Douglas said: “For the avoidance of any doubt, we will not be making any aircraft order announcements during this week's show. (…) We're currently actively engaged in a single aisle narrow body campaign. The minute we're at the point where we have made a decision, we will reveal it to everybody.” If he prefers another Boeing order over one with Airbus he was unwilling to go into it. When Riyadh Air announced the 787 order together with one for Saudia on March 14, the new airline said it would take delivery of the first 787-9s in 2025. Douglas said that while the order was announced in March, it had been negotiated with Boeing “during a significant amount of time.” That’s how the airline secured the early slots, although Boeing has a growing backlog for the Dreamliner after a number of strong recent sales campaigns. Riyadh Air CEO Tony Douglas at the presentation in Paris. (Richard Schuurman) During a separate pre-airshow briefing, Boeing Commercial Aircraft President and CEO Stan Deal said on Sunday that the OEM is evaluating a rate increase for the production of the 787. The rate will go up to five aircraft per month later this year and to ten a month in 2025-2026, but if Boeing is convinced that demand is a long-term trend, “we will make a step for additional capacity,” Stan Deal said. Dependent on Boeing deliveries During the Riyadh Air media presentation, Tony Douglas stressed the importance that Boeing will deliver the 39 Dreamliners on firm order on time. The airline CEO said that during the negotiations, Boeing committed itself to “deliver against the timetable we've got. They have made those commitments. One of the reasons why I personally went to Charleston more than half a month ago was to engage with 5.000 people in the workforce. As I said to everybody in the shop: if you're late with us, it's not as if we can extend leases or can slow down our network expansion. That’s because we don't have any leases, we don't have any aircraft and we don't have a network. They're all dependent upon the first deliveries. Those machines need to be delivered to us in early 25. And we've got every confidence that they will do.” Riyadh Air wants to grow the network by the end of the decade to some 100 destinations out of its hub in the Saudi Arabian capital. Douglas didn’t specify which ones, but gave away some of them: “It will probably be every major capital city in Europe plus all three US touchpoints, particularly on the eastern coast. You'll be talking about all the major capital cities in the Far East, and then coming progressively back towards the Middle East. So that's the most likely outcome now we're two years to go.” Creating the network will require Riyadh Air to conclude services agreements and bilateral slots. “Some places around the world are easier than others and obviously, we've got it all literally itemized down in terms of which categories they sit into.” Under Saudi Arabia’s Vision 2030, the country should attract 100 million tourists in 2030 and its airlines carry 300 million passengers. There is a huge market out there to be won, as the country is developing multiple outstanding and lavish new cities and destinations, with a young and growing population. “Let's put it into perspective. The landmass of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia is equivalent to the whole of France plus the whole of Spain, plus the whole of Italy, plus the whole of Germany, plus the whole of Belgium plus the whole of the UK altogether. It is half the size of Western Europe. To fly from Riyadh to Jeddah is the same as flying from London Heathrow to Rome.” A Boeing 787-9 in full Riyadh Air livery is on static display at the Paris Airshow. (Richard Schuurman) No legacy systems Douglas spent considerable time explaining what makes Riyadh Air tick. Described by him as “the biggest startup in commercial aviation history in the last twenty to thirty years”, he said it can be different from other airlines. “The fact is that we have no legacy systems. Therefore, we can probably choose to do some things quite differently.” One of the things that Riyadh Air wants to be is “a genuine digital native (…) to make sure that everything we do is designed more for the world of ChatGPT, more for the world of the marketplace, in the way in which we all experienced the Amazons and the manual the ways in which we interact because that's the audience that we're talking to home.” The carrier will have “an obsessive attention to detail with the guest experience.” As an example, Douglas shared how one’s personal profile and traits like being left-handed will translate into how that customer is recognized and served on board the aircraft, being offered cutlery in line with personal preferences. The airline’s IATA code RX is another teaser: “Romeo X, we chose that particularly because it's got a digital connotation and back to tease and reveal.” More to be revealed until 2025 Tease and reveal is something that Riyadh Air has frequently planned for the next two years until the first service in 2025. It unveiled the lavender purple livery on a Boeing 787-9 rented from Boeing in late May and flew the aircraft to Riyadh on June 12. This week, it will be on static display at the Paris Airshow. Later this year, a second livery will be revealed, followed by the cabin product in Q1 2024. “We don't want to release all of that product specification too early,” Douglas said. “We're going to tease and reveal and we're going to share things as they evolve because this is a story now. We're in chapter one. By the end of this year, we'll probably be in chapter two, three, and four, and we'll progressively share them with everybody. So it builds in a very coherent way. We're seriously upfront with everybody as well.”

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