Flyadeal has settled on the Airbus A330neo for its widebody requirement, though it has not confirmed the size of an order or timeframe for deliveries.
“We are moving ahead with Airbus, but haven’t quite finalised numbers,” chief executive Steven Greenaway told FlightGlobal at the Airline Economics Growth Frontiers event in Dublin on 14 January.
The Saudi Arabian low-cost airline – which has a fleet of 24 CFM International Leap-powered A320neos, and 12 A320ceos – had also been considering the Boeing 777-300ER and the 787, a type operated by sister airline Saudia and ordered by Saudi start-up Riyadh Air. However, the commonality between Flyadeal’s Airbus narrowbodies and the A330neo appears to have swung it for the European manufacturer.
Greenaway is keen to supplement or replace the four or five wet-leased A330ceos Flyadeal uses at peak times – including for the Muslim pilgrimage of Haj – but also to expand mid- and long-haul services to regions that typically supply manual guest workers to Saudi Arabia. That means flights from the Indian subcontinent and parts of Southeast Asia.
The carrier has been growing quickly since launching in 2017. It is due to take delivery of another six to eight A320neos this year, and its first A321neo in 2026. By the end of the decade, Greenaway expects to be operating an all-neo narrowbody fleet of 39 A321s and 49 A320s.
Flyadeal operates its single-aisles in a high-density configuration with 186 Acro-supplied economy seats on the A320s, while the A321s will have 240.
With around two million Syrians living in Saudi Arabia, Greenaway sees the potential reopening of the Syrian market as a “huge opportunity” – almost every carrier suspended services at the outbreak of the civil war in 2011. Fellow Gulf carrier Qatar Airways began thrice-weekly services to the capital Damascus on 7 January.
