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Flyadeal has revealed its long-awaited widebody deal, placing a firm order for 10 Airbus A330-900s which the Saudi Arabian LCC hopes will propel it into a new phase of growth.
The Jeddah-based airline was launched by the kingdom’s flag carrier Saudia in 2017 initially with a domestic network. It began international services in 2021 and is now targeting a fleet of almost 100 aircraft by the end of the decade.
“This is a real endorsement from the board, the Saudia Group and the country,” Flyadeal CEO Steven Greenway told Aviation Week speaking in advance of the A330neo order ceremony in Toulouse on April 23. It is a recognition of Flydeal’s “very solid operation,” Greenway said, noting the carrier's industry-leading on-time performance and strong financial results.
Greenway acknowledged that Flyadeal’s move into permanent widebody operations is “pushing the envelope with the LCC model.”
“The reality is long haul, low cost doesn't work everywhere,” said Greenway, who has experience of these operations at carriers such as Singapore’s Scoot.
“The difference with the Saudi market is you have a huge amount of labor and pilgrimage traffic coming into the kingdom that a lot of other countries don't enjoy,” Greenway continued. “It is high-volume, low-yield traffic, and we know that if we get our unit costs right, we can have a piece of that pie.”
Flyadeal has been tapping into this market for the past three years using wet-leased Airbus A330s and Boeing 777s to conduct seasonal charter services bringing travelers into Saudi Arabia for Hajj and Umrah pilgrimages.
Greenway believes the unique traffic patterns of the Saudi market plus the familiarity the airline now has with widebody operations means Flyadeal has already partly mitigated the risks of going for the A330neo fleet.
“This year alone we will have up to eight widebodies working for us, and we typically have three at any time all year round,” Greenway said. “We minimize risk by dipping our toe in the water with charters on specific routes then flipping it to a scheduled service as we build up the market.”
Flyadeal’s first routes to justify this approach are to Tashkent and Namangan in Uzbekistan which will see daily widebody services later this year. The number of scheduled widebody routes will “probably increase to five to 10 by the end of the year,” Greenway said.
The carrier is scheduled to take delivery of its first A330-900 in July 2027 with all 10 arriving within the following three years, according to the Flyadeal CEO. The airline has “a degree of confidence” about the promised delivery dates on the A330neo because of its lower production rate compared to the A320 family, Greenway said, noting that current customers are not experiencing delays in receiving their aircraft.
Flyadeal has another 10 A330neo purchase rights in addition to the firm order for 10 of the type. The specifications of the twin-aisle's interior are yet to be finalized but the A330neos will be configured with 420-440 seats in a two-class layout with 14-21 of those seats in a premium economy cabin.
Before settling on the A330neo, the airline’s fleet studies looked at the options of taking used 777s from parent Saudia and refurbishing them and also splitting the order by buying new 787s from Boeing in addition to A330neos.
“We looked at the 787 because that's forming the backbone widebody, long-haul fleets for both Saudia and Riyadh Air, and we looked at the A330-900 mainly because of commonality with our 320 fleet,” Greenway explained.
With only seven 777s available from Saudia, plus a high-density economy layout that would produce an aircraft with 540 seats, “it was too much for us on a lot of the routes we wanted to operate,” he said.
The 787 was ruled out on two counts. “We could only jam in about 380-390 seats in an economy heavy configuration, and we deemed that too small from an economics perspective as we will be going up against the likes of Cebu Pacific and Lion Air who have 440-plus seats,” Greenway said.
In addition, the earliest Flyadeal could receive 787s was 2029. “We just couldn't get access soon enough and we didn't want to be waiting around for four to five years,” he said.
The fleet commonality and earlier availability of the A330neo sealed the deal and will operate on a network from Saudi Arabia to Europe, South and Southeast Asia without payload restrictions.
“At 420 to 440 seats the economics are incredibly compelling and the feedback we got from operators was the aircraft is fantastic and does the job,” Greenway said. The A350 model was not part of the evaluation as Flyadeal does not need the longer-range capability of this type.
By 2029, Flyadeal will be operating a fleet of 98 aircraft including its new cohort of 10 A330neos along with 88 A320neos and A321neos. These will be supplemented by additional wet-leased widebody capacity even as its A330neos arrive, Greenway noted.
At present, the carrier is operating 38 A320ceos and A320neos. Its fleet will grow to 50 aircraft fleet in about a year, Greenway said. When it achieves this, the economies of scale of a larger fleet start to bring benefits to financial performance, he added.
This is further enhanced as more international routes are launched, increasing its stage length. By 2030 the aim is for the ratio of domestic to international flying to change from 20:80 today to 50:50. “The highly efficient flying from a unit cost point of view is all yet to come,” Greenway promised.
The arrival of larger A321neos is another boost as they offer an 18% unit cost improvement over A320s. Its first A321neos from an order of 39 aircraft will begin delivery in 2026.
Greenway’s focus is on lowering unit cost which, coupled with strong revenue and yield, pushes toward his target of double-digit profit margins. “The faster I can bring unit costs down, the more profitable we going to be and the more sustainable we're going to be,” he said.
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