Saudi Arabian airline flynas has announced plans to initiate operations to Eritrea, a northeast African country situated on the Red Sea coast.

Starting from Jan. 17, 2024, the carrier will establish a connection between Jeddah and Eritrea's capital, Asmara, with two weekly flights on Wednesdays and Sundays utilizing Airbus A320neo aircraft. This 441-mi. (383-nm) route marks the sole nonstop service between Saudi Arabia and Eritrea.

With this expansion, flynas will bolster its African network to eight destinations, including Addis Ababa, Ethiopia; Algiers and Constantine in Algeria; Cairo, Giza and Sohag in Egypt; and Casablanca in Morocco. This compares to the three cities served in 2019 when the LCC operated flights to Algiers, Cairo and Khartoum, Sudan.

Eritrea, with a population of approximately 3.7 million, currently has five international routes serving Asmara. Ethiopian Airlines operates three daily flights from Addis Ababa, flydubai provides a 9X-weekly connection from Dubai and Turkish Airlines offers three flights per week from Istanbul.

Egyptair and Tarco Aviation also connect Asmara with Cairo and Port Sudan twice a week and once a week, respectively, according to data from OAG Schedules Analyser. The Port Sudan-Asmara route was the latest to launch—on Nov. 7.

Earlier this month, flynas opened a new daily service between Riyadh, Saudia Arabia, and Bahrain and will commence Jeddah-Bahrain flights in December. The latter route will be served twice a week onboard A320neos.

The airline’s expansion to Eritrea comes despite IATA lamenting the amount of blocked funds in the country. The organization estimated that about $79 million was being blocked in 2022 and called on the state to expedite the release of the funds.