Four Saudi Cities Are Coming Back to Qatar Airways

Qatar Airways is restoring service to four Saudi Arabian cities over the coming months, rebuilding a regional network that thinned out during the blockade years and never fully returned. Doha–Qassim resumes on October 25 with two weekly flights, followed by Taif on October 31, Yanbu on January 2 and Tabuk on January 3. Each route starts at twice weekly. Together they take the airline’s Saudi map from eight destinations to twelve and push its total schedule to the Kingdom past 155 weekly flights, more than ten percent above what it operated over the summer.

The four cities are not obvious tourist names, and that is rather the point. Qassim is an agricultural and university province in the centre of the country. Taif sits in the mountains above Mecca and functions as a summer escape for Gulf residents. Yanbu is a Red Sea industrial port. Tabuk is the administrative anchor of the northwest, the region where Neom is being built. Each has an airport served mostly by domestic carriers, and each now gains a one-stop connection into a network of more than 160 destinations.

The volume behind the decision is substantial. Qatar Airways says it carried more than 2.3 million passengers between Saudi Arabia and its global network over the past twelve months, a large figure for a market that was closed to it entirely between 2017 and 2021. Saudi Arabia has been issuing tourist visas at scale, hosting international events and generating outbound travel from a rising middle class, and the traffic flows in both directions. For travellers based in the four cities, the practical change is not having to route through Riyadh or Jeddah first.

One notable name is still missing. Neom, the Red Sea megaproject with its own airport, is not due to rejoin the Qatar Airways network until the second half of 2027, a reminder that the destination’s aviation demand is still being built rather than served. The winter additions are lower-risk by comparison: established cities with existing populations and existing reasons to fly. Whether twice-weekly frequencies survive into the summer season will be the real test, since winter is when Gulf carriers add capacity most freely and trim it most quietly.

Sources: Aviation Week, Arabian Business