A new super airline is about to be born, Saudi Arabia ready to compete with Emirates

Saudi Arabia plans to become a tourism hub and an attraction for investment from around the world and To do so, it is ready to launch the second flag carrier. In fact, the official announcement of the birth of RIA, a company that will be based at Riyadh airport, is expected in these days.

The intentions are to become an aviation giant in a few years, and to do so they are ready to invest tens of billions of dollars to build a fleet of hundreds of aircraft from scratch.

Saudia will not disappear

In the intentions of the Saudi government. the current national airline Saudia will not disappear, rather it will continue to grow by operating no longer as now from the two hubs of Jeddah and Riyadh, but relying solely on Jeddah airport.

I honestly don't understand the point of creating a second company from scratch when you could simply grow the one that is already in operation and that has made giant strides in recent years in terms of product, service and reception as the beautiful lounge in Jeddah.

The new RIA

The plan calls for RIA to be a Riyadh-based airline. The airline will serve both tourists and business travelers and the goal is to become the size of Emirates, but in a quarter of the time.

It will also be interesting to see what choice will be made in terms of alliances. Saudia today is a Skyteam member, but RIA could decide to copy Emirates and remain alone or do like Qatar and become a major player in one of the other alliances.

The Wall Street Journal reports. that Saudi Arabia's new airline, RIA, is expected to announce its first aircraft order soon, perhaps in the next few days. The order is expected to include both wide body and narrow body jets and will be worth $35 billion at list prices, the WSJ talks mainly about a direct order to Boeing but it is clear that if RIA wants to have that many planes it will have to fish in the Airbus house as well. In fact, news had previously come out about a possible order for more than 50 A350s, the European manufacturer's flagship.

$100 billion over 10 years

Saudi Arabia is reportedly ready to spend the monstrous sum of $100 billion in the aviation sector by 2030, a figure unthinkable for any other nation in the world (including the UAE). All to shift the center of gravity from the Dubai-Qatar axis to the two Saudi airports.

One of the investments is the gigantic new airport King Salman International should transform Riyadh into a global logistics hub, stimulating transportation, trade and tourism.

In conclusion

In recent years we have seen announcements of pharaonic projects, such as The Rig the amusement park which should be built on a disused oil platform or the city within a city, a transportation and housing system for hundreds of thousands of people. New Murabb, that is its name, will be developed over an area of 19 square kilometers.

The difference in this case is. the order of aircraft worth billions of dollars will bring jobs to American and European companies on the one hand and is bound to change the balance, not only geopolitical, throughout the Middle East and beyond.