Gulf Region LCCs Are Spreading Their Reach

Gulf area LCCs are ordering widebodies, flying to increasingly far-flung destinations and taking advantage of societal changes that are significantly increasing the pool of potential passengers.

Those changes include the relaxation of traditional strictures in Saudi Arabia that allow Saudi women to travel by themselves, or in groups, to neighboring destinations like Dubai and Bahrain for a weekend, creating a new passenger flow, flyadeal CEO Steven Greenway said.

Another growing revenue stream is that of Muslims flying to Saudi Arabia on pilgrimages. The Haj is the best known, but it has always been restricted by the number of pilgrims that the country’s authorities can safely accommodate in the short Haj period. The Saudi government has now extended the Umrah, or “little pilgrimage,” to year-round, meaning a significantly increased number of inbound passengers to the Kingdom.

Saudi Arabia’s efforts to create and stimulate its tourism industry are starting to see more resorts being developed, further growing the market.

Saudi Arabia is unique among Gulf states in having a significant domestic market on top of its international market. The Jeddah-Riyadh route is one of the busiest in the world and will probably become the busiest, in terms of capacity, within the next few years, Greenway said. “We have 23 to 25 flights a day, each way. Saudia and flynas have roughly the same, so that’s 75 a day.”

Flyadeal’s route network is 80:20 in favor of domestic routes. That will change over the next couple of years to roughly 50:50. “We will continue to grow domestically where we can, but a lot of emphasis will be international,” Greenway said.

To cope with this expansion, flyadeal’s fleet is growing. By June 2025, flyadeal will operate 40 Airbus A320-family aircraft comprised of 29 neos and 11 ceos. And in April, the carrier became the latest Gulf LCC to add widebodies to its fleet with orders for 10 Airbus A330-900s plus 10 purchase rights.

Saudi LCC flynas also decided to acquire widebodies, signing an order for 15 Airbus A330-900s (together with 75 A320neos) at the 2024 Farnborough Air Show. The A330s will be used to increase flynas’ long-haul portfolio, particularly for flying large numbers of pilgrims heading to Saudi Arabia. Deliveries are scheduled from 2027 onwards.

Adrian Hamilton-Manns, CEO at Muscat, Oman-based SalamAir, also sees a “crazy strong” market that he’s working to leverage by taking the LCC back to its core roots.

“We’ve really tapped into a deep vein of demand that had been ignored in Oman for some time,” he said. “We’ve moved back to being a low-cost airline. We’ve re-embraced it, and the reaction has been significant.”

SalamAir expects to add two more A321neos to its fleet in July and a further 10 A320neo-family aircraft over the next three years, all via operational leases.

SalamAir is also looking south to Africa for new traffic flows, adding Nairobi and Mombasa in Kenya, as well as Port Sudan (Sudan), Mogadishu (Somalia) and Hargeisa, in the self-proclaimed state of Somaliland, to its route map. Kenya, with its large Indian expat population, is regarded as a particularly attractive target.

At the northern end of the Gulf, meanwhile, Kuwait-based Jazeera Airways, one of the few privately owned carriers in the region, is also building its fleet and route map. The carrier has a fleet of 13 A320ceos and 11 A320neos, with deliveries of 18 A320neos and eight A321neos scheduled to start in 2026. The new, larger A321s will be useful for services on busy routes to the Indian subcontinents, where slot constraints make it pragmatic to operate aircraft that maximize the number of passengers in each aircraft.

Jazeera is about to embark on an expansion of its dedicated terminal (T5) at Kuwait International Airport. Opened in 2018, T5 is operating well beyond its design capacity with almost 5 million passengers in 2024 compared to a planned 3.5 million. “We really need to build terminal capacity to 7.5 to 8 million in the next two to three years,” CEO Barathan Pasupathi said.

The region’s first LCC, Sharjah-based Air Arabia, also continues to expand steadily, inaugurating 31 routes (for a total of 220) in 2024 and expanding its fleet to 81 A320-family aircraft. A further 120 Airbus narrowbodies are on order.

Air Arabia expects to take delivery of its first A321XLRs in 2027. “We’re already flying seven hours into Europe and East Asia, and with the XLR, we’ll be able to reach destinations eight or even eight-and-a-half hours away,” CEO Adel Ali said. “This allows us to expand into new markets like Thailand and Kuala Lumpur from our existing bases.”