Riyadh Air Adds Bangkok, Manila and Manchester in September

Riyadh Air is expanding on three fronts this month, adding Bangkok, Manila and Manchester to a network that only began commercial flying earlier this year. The Saudi carrier opened 3X-weekly Boeing 787-9 service between Riyadh and Bangkok Suvarnabhumi Airport on September 2, and daily flights to Manila Ninoy Aquino International Airport follow on September 9. A 3X-weekly link to Manchester Airport rounds out the month on September 19. Together the three additions lift the airline from 11 destinations to 14, according to OAG Schedules Analyser data cited by Aviation Week, and push its scheduled two-way capacity up 18.6% month over month to 265,692 seats.

Manila is the largest of the three additions by frequency, and the reasoning behind it is as much demographic as commercial. Saudi Arabia hosts a substantial Filipino expatriate community, and a daily widebody rotation gives the airline a dependable base of visiting-friends-and-relatives demand to build on, alongside business travelers and passengers connecting onward through Riyadh. Bangkok deepens a Southeast Asian presence the carrier has been assembling in stages. Manchester, meanwhile, becomes Riyadh Air’s second United Kingdom destination after London Heathrow, a signal that the airline intends to court regional British demand rather than concentrate everything on the capital.

The September additions follow an equally busy August, when Riyadh Air opened four South Asian routes in a single month: Mumbai, Dhaka, Islamabad and Lahore. Taken together, the two months show how quickly the airline is filling in a map that was essentially blank at the start of the year. Management has said it intends to serve 22 cities by March 2027, which implies roughly another eight destinations over the next year and a half. That is an aggressive schedule for a start-up carrier, and it depends on aircraft deliveries arriving broadly on time.

For travelers, the practical effect is a growing set of one-stop itineraries through Riyadh between Europe and Asia, on a route map that competes directly with the established Gulf hubs in Dubai, Doha and Abu Dhabi. Whether Riyadh Air can win connecting traffic from carriers with two decades of head start is still an open question, and the airline’s early frequencies on several routes remain modest. Passengers weighing a connection this autumn should note that three-times-weekly service leaves comparatively little slack if a flight is disrupted.

Sources: Aviation Week, Riyadh Air