Vincent Coste: how Riyadh Air is build up from scratch |

It’s still some 16 to 18 months until Riyadh Air is supposed to operate its first commercial flight in the second quarter of 2025. At the same time, it is only 16 to 18 months. The start-up carrier from Saudi Arabia has big ambitions to raise the bar on customer experience, but first, it needs to build up the company and establish the network. This is part of the job of Vincent Coste, Chief Commercial Officer at Riyadh Air since July last year. So he joined eight months before the Saudi Public Investment Fund (PIF) officially launched Riyadh Air. AirInsight sat down with Coste at the Dubai Airshow to discuss which boxes need to be ticked before the airline is ready for operations. “We are planning our first flight in Q2 of 2025 and will start sales in Q1. Obviously, we need a little lead time to fill up the aircraft. When it comes to the timeline, we have a very strong organization, with different workstreams across all divisions of the airline: finance, operations, commercial, in guest experience. All this is strongly monitored. On a weekly basis, we have key milestones,” says Coste. “We started even before the official announcement of the airline. So we have had a lot of lead time for the early milestones. Now, everything is on track.” Building up an airline from scratch means it can choose how the network should look like. Coste was at the World Travel Market fair in London a couple of weeks ago and received a lot of interest from airports and travel agencies to have Riyadh Air. Again, preparations have started some time ago: “We already have a network plan. It is quite easy when you start an airline like Riyadh Air to define a network because it is all about looking at traffic flows. We have a lot of data in the airline industry. Since our focus in the early stages is essentially closing the gap in terms of connectivity between Riyadh and the rest of the world,” says Coste. “You take the key traffic flows between Riyadh and the G20 capitals in the world and you can easily deduct what our first destinations will be. Just as an example: between Riyadh and Far East Asia, more than 50 percent of the passengers today are connecting through a big hub in the region. It is essentially closing this gap in terms of connectivity what we intend to do.” “We recently flew with some of our team members to China, which will be one of our key markets. All of us had to connect in one of the hubs in the region, simply because there is no direct connectivity. Saudia operates a few flights a week to Beijing, but the demand is much higher than this. So the goal is to establish this connectivity.” Growing with each aircraft delivery Riyadh Air has said that it will target 100 destinations in 2030. But on the number it will start with in the first year, Vincent Coste is less open. “We will have one aircraft coming, then two, then three, etcetera. We will start lean. This is almost frustrating. We wish we had as many aircraft as possible from the beginning because we see such high demand in the early stages. From a commercial perspective, I am not too worried about the first years of operations, because point-to-point traffic will be enough to fill up this flight.” Riyadh Air will start with Boeing 787-9s ordered directly from the factory. Through PIF, the airline placed an order for 39 Dreamliners plus 33 options. Before the end of November, Riyadh Air will announce its narrowbody order for reportedly 100 MAX aircraft that will operate on regional and even domestic services within the vast country that Saudi Arabia is. “We will start to reveal the number of destinations and the destinations itself next year. You can map it out with the number of aircraft. We are aligned with Boeing’s delivery timelines. We will fly a few destinations in 2025, more in 2026, etcetera. It is a ramp-up that will lead us to more than 100 in 2030. From that perspective, the ramp up will be extremely fast, because we have 5,5 years roughly to go from one to over 100.” Ramping up also means that the workforce will have to grow. “Currently, we have a little more than 200 employees. When we opened up for candidates in March to apply for different roles, we received over 900.000 applicants who responded until today. It went beyond our wildest imagination.” “Because we will be highly digital, we want to be as lean as possible as an airline. Ultimately, it is all about being a profitable airline. In terms of pilots and cabin crew, we will have the normal number of people, but in the head office, we want to be as lean as possible. I can’t share the exact number of staff we will have, but take a very efficient airline and apply the number of aircraft to have the number of pilots and crew.” AI and digital are key CEO Tony Douglas has said from day one that Riyadh Air will be a ‘digitally native’ airline. Vincent Coste elaborates a bit more on this: “There are two areas. The first is about distribution, so the way we are selling tickets. The smartphone will be our main channel of distribution, especially in Saudi Arabia. The average age of the population of Saudi Arabia is 29 years old, the country has one of if not the highest penetration in the world in terms of IOS smartphones per capita.” “And when it comes to indirect sales, we will obviously rely on travel agents. This was of course one of the purposes at WTM to engage with our future distributors. We will try to connect with them directly as much as possible for a richer experience versus the current distribution channels that are not customer-centric and not content-centric.” “In terms of distribution, we also don’t want to focus on tickets and traditional ancillaries but will try to extend our reach to travel offerings, because new technologies allow for great integration of third-party content to offer a full comprehensive travel experience into Saudi Arabia. We are working on this right now with our technology partners. Next year, you will hear a bit more of this.” “The second example of digital native is the guest experience. It is about how we allow our guests, our customers from the beginning when they book a trip to do everything through their phone. Of course, new technologies are there like gen-AI and interaction. If you can plug your content with AI, this will make the life of the passengers very easy.” “New technologies allow these seamless interactions with your smartphone and in terms of guest experience, you don’t necessarily need to go through all the steps that are currently necessary for traveling. We are looking at all steps: from booking to going to the airport, ground experience, boarding, onboard, etc. It is a work in progress, but by early next year, we will have more to reveal.” Riyadh Air is not alone in adopting AI to enhance customer experience. Saudia is also investing in new technology for interaction with its customers, the airline showed in its pavilion at the Dubai Airshow. Working closely with Saudia At the airshow, Saudia and Riyadh Air announced a new partnership that will include codesharing of flights. “We are the second national airline of Saudi Arabia. Saudia Airlines has been operating for the last 78 years. They are the historical operator in the country, Jeddah is their home but they have been strong in Riyadh. Obviously, we will ramp up, but Saudia will stay for years in Riyadh until we reach our size in terms of fleet and network,” says Coste. “During these interim years, we will have to work together. We have to make sure that their domestic network connects with our long-haul network because ultimately, it is about connecting Saudi Arabia to the rest of the world and the world to Saudi Arabia. So yes, we will definitely work closely with Saudia. This partnership will have multiple steps. You need to make sure that you are compliant in all aspects.” “But we will also work together with other big carriers in all the continents where we will fly. We were in China recently, looking at different airports, and engaging with the Chinese authorities, but also with the big Chinese carriers. Because China will be a strategic market for us.” “Similarly, Europe. We will start to fly to one, two, three, and four destinations, but we will need strong partnerships in Europe. The same for the Americas. We have already started engaging with major carriers on each of these continents because that is a virtual network, right? We see a great interest in Riyadh Air, because, in the long term, we will also give them fantastic connectivity in Saudi Arabia and in the region.” Fantastic opportunity Riyadh Air has no intention to source its aircraft from lessors but intends to order them with the OEM outright. In the current constrained market with constantly delayed deliveries, this makes a start-up very vulnerable. “The network growth has been designed in line with the actual delivery commitments from Boeing, in the case of the widebodies. This is why the interaction with Saudia is so critical because we need to jointly make sure that Riyadh is connected and even more connected as we grow. But this is fully taken into consideration in our network plans.” Vincent Coste joined Riyadh Air last year from Gulf Air, where he also was CCO. Before that, he worked for two years as CCO at Kenya Airways, two years as SVP of Eastern Regions with Qatar Airways, and ten years in various roles at Air France-KLM. Starting something from scratch is most satisfying and interesting: “I have worked 30 years in legacy airlines, all beautiful airlines. I am proud of my past career. But when I was contacted for this opportunity to launch a start-up airline, I jumped on the opportunity. Like my colleagues, precisely because of the fact that I have experienced so many constraints in the past in the legacy processes I could not say no. It is a fantastic opportunity.”

US Flight Planner - US DoT On-Time Data	Airbus vs Boeing - Official OEM Data
US Airline Schedule Performance - US DoT Data	Daily OEM Production & Deliveries -

Subscribe To Our Newsletter

Related News

Subscribe To Our Newsletter

Related News

Fuel Exposes American’s Older Problem

JetBlue’s Problem Is Fuel. Everything Else Is Working.

ANA Buys More Embraers In Strategy Update