Saudi Arabia Started an Airline in Its Third City

A new Saudi low-cost airline has begun flying, operating its first service from King Fahd International Airport in Dammam to Riyadh. The carrier is owned by a consortium of Air Arabia Group, Saudi Arabia’s Nesma Group and Kun Holding, which was selected by the General Authority of Civil Aviation in July 2025 to establish a budget airline based in the Eastern Province. It received its air operator certificate earlier this month after completing the required technical and regulatory checks, and marked the launch with a ceremony at the airport before the inaugural departure.

The opening schedule is deliberately modest and entirely domestic: two daily flights from Dammam to Riyadh, two daily to Jeddah, and one daily to Madinah — five departures a day in total, operated by 174-seat single-class Airbus A320s. Starting inside the domestic market lets the airline build operational reliability and a maintenance base before it takes on international routes, and it puts capacity on three corridors where demand is already proven rather than betting on markets that have to be created.

The choice of Dammam is the strategic point. Saudi Arabia’s aviation build-out has concentrated on Riyadh, where the state-backed Riyadh Air launched last year and is expanding quickly into Europe and Asia, and on Jeddah as the pilgrimage gateway. The Eastern Province — Dammam, Dhahran and Khobar, and the industrial economy around them — has been served largely as a spoke. A based carrier turns it into an origin with its own network, which is exactly what the country’s transport strategy says it wants.

It also gives Air Arabia a fourth national platform. The Sharjah-based group already operates hubs in the UAE, Morocco, Egypt and Armenia, and its model has been to partner with local shareholders and regulators rather than fly into a country from outside. For travellers in the Gulf, the near-term effect is more low-cost domestic capacity inside Saudi Arabia and, once international rights follow, more competition on the short-haul routes that currently run through Riyadh or Jeddah.

Sources: Khaleej Times, Aviation Week