Saudi Arabian budget carrier Flyadeal is closing in on a planned move to bring long-haul aircraft into the fleet and hopes to make an announcement after the summer.
Flyadeal chief executive Steven Greenway last month at the IATA AGM in Dubai told FlightGlobal that the carrier, which operates Airbus A320 narrowbodies, is looking at long-haul operations.
”That’s moving forward,” he says during an interview at the Farnborough air show on 22 July. “We’ve done our assessment. We’re just moving through with suppliers what that looks like and so forth. I hope we can make some announcements just after summer. So we are not too far away.”
Flyadeal is already stepping up in size of operation after striking a deal to acquire 51 more Airbus narrowbodies – including 39 A321neos. That deal was part of a wider 105-strong order from parent Saudia Group and Greenway notes being part of a bigger group gives it more options when it comes to adding widebodies.
“The reason why it has taken a bit longer is we have looked at all the options including repurposing used aircraft from Saudia, which is what I did at Scoot with Singapore Airlines,” he notes. Scoot, at which Greenway was chief commercial officer, initially launched flights with former Singapore Airlines 777s before adding its own 787s a few years later.
He says Flyadeal has taken a bit more time looking at “what the options were internally and also what was available externally as well and the timelines as well”. He adds: “It’s not just earlier slots you want, but at a reasonable pace so that you can build scale quickly.
“You’ve got to have that pace to get to scale reasonably quickly without breaking the bank, and scale for us at minimum is about 10, because it allows you economically to have a spare.”
