More than 10 million passengers were carried by flyadeal in 2025; a year-on-year rise of 33%. It was consistently the most punctual low-cost airline in the Middle East and North Africa, with On-Time Performance (OTP) averaging almost 90 per cent across the year.
Our average flying stage length is 900 kilometres, so about an hour and a half. That’s very short; 80% of our capacity is domestic. We’re like a bus service, straight from A to B.
A lot of the people who fly with us are not looking for an elevated inflight experience. If they wanted that, they go to our full-service sister airline Saudia. A lot of them would consider that a full meal on an hour’s flight as a waste of money. We don’t really need to do that.
That’s changing as we go with longer and longer sectors. We’re now pushing into Pakistan, where we’ve increased to five destinations since launching into the market in February 2025, with an average stage length of about four-and-a-half hours.
From next year, when we start taking deliveries of Airbus A330s as our first long-haul aircraft, we will go all the way down to Manila and Jakarta; that’s 10 to 12 hours. For that, the onboard retail proposition needs to be far more sophisticated.
New aircraft for flyadeal
Our focus is now on new aircraft. The average age of our fleet is barely two years old. We’re really pushing the boundaries in terms of seat technology: lighter weight, more space, no IFE box and better comfort, particularly in the foot area.
We have 186 seats on all our Airbus A320s. On the old configuration, there was not enough space in the overhead bins. We’d be putting 20-plus bags down in the belly of the plane. That would slow our turnarounds. It would cause a lot of complaints and NPS falls.
We don’t have that problem anymore. In terms of cabin, we make sure that we’ve got the Airbus L bins – extra-large space bins. Simple things like that really change opinion. It leads to much faster turnarounds on those aircraft.
The A330s will be a completely different product with extra space not confined to Economy class. We will have a small Premium cabin with more legroom and greater seat recline, for which we know there is a market, as passengers look for additional comfort when travelling longer distances.
flyadeal’s onboard service
Our onboard service, in terms of food and drink, has been basic. Over the coming months, we’ve got a phased rollout of enhancements and improvements, including greater choice and more nourishing food.
As our model changes – and we continue to push the boundaries in terms of stage length and entering new countries – we’re having to make changes. We want to have a standard approach in terms of inventory. We’ll carry less domestically than on international flights but we want to be able to offer a consistent service for our customers.
We try to bring on meals that appeal to everyone. There’s a bit of Saudi cuisine, and there will certainly be more, but most of it is international, simply because of the diverse passenger clientele travelling with us.
Considerations during RFPs
Most of the stuff we consider during an RFP [request for proposal] is off-the-shelf. Most LCCs don’t want to have something that is so customised that it can’t be supported: the supply chain is weak and there are no spare parts. Pretty well everyone, from Ryanair to ourselves, has standard brochure seats.
For us, it’s important that it’s in the Airbus catalogue. We want something that’s off-the-shelf, readily used and lightweight.
We want a seat that is already used, out there and respected. We modify it a little bit, in terms of colours, schemes and seat covers. That’s it. We don’t want to tamper with anything.
We do a bit of customisation, such as USB-C ports, to keep the technology up to date. But for the most part, we take the most stock and standard approach possible.
Minimising environmental impact
We’re spending billions of dollars on new aircraft. We’re trying to minimise our footprint. We’re trying to reduce fuel consumption. The A321s that are coming up will have 244 seats – that’s 30 per cent more seating than on our A320s.
The footprint that we have, on a per customer basis, is among the lowest in the market. I don’t think there’s enough recognition of that. We do that as part of our DNA because it makes economic sense to do so. That reduces our impact and provides sustainability.
What I find, in terms of sustainability, is we spend an inordinate amount of time actually trying to understand the truth. When it comes to sustainability, trying to get to the bottom of what actually does make a difference is really difficult.
A lot of companies – airlines and entities – do stuff to be seen simply to be doing stuff. But when you look at the facts, when you look at the data, when you try to understand exactly what is going on – it doesn’t weigh up.
I think we have to tread very carefully. There are people and organisations who are finally waking up to this. But I still think we’ve got a long way to go.
I think as an industry we’ve kid ourselves into something that perhaps is quite dangerous, and actually causes more harm than good.
We have an impact on the environment. I can’t greenwash this. We have to be honest and open with ourselves. We are a polluter. We have to acknowledge that. We are an economic activity that does have an impact. We’ve got to minimise it, but we’ve got to have the right data, and we’ve got to have the openness and transparency to be able to do that. We do not have that at the moment. We chase fads – and SAF is a fad at the moment.
Supplies and tech
We work with Catrion, our catering provider in Saudi Arabia, in terms of supply and technology. I don’t think we’ve pushed them in terms of sophistication, particularly with the digital platform onboard. We’re looking at the connectivity of our aircraft and what we could do, in terms of enhancing the onboard experience and customising connectivity, POS and how we stock onboard.
We had to start building out configurations of the A330s without fully knowing the end game in terms of the exact offering. We have provisions on the A330s so that we don’t have to do downwind catering, which in turn saves on costs.
We have a bulk uplift of galley carts on the first flight of the day. They’re topped up. That helps keep our turn times to as low as 35 minutes. Typically, we go above 90% On-Time Performance, which is a record breaker.
We’ve eliminated the downwind catering, so the aircraft doesn’t need to be touched. We can turn a wide body around within an hour, rather than two, and get back to base.
Digitalisation and personalisation
I go out of my way to fly every airline I possibly can. I’ll try other airlines to see what’s going on.
Name an airline that has truly revolutionised the onboard experience in terms of digitalisation, personalisation and such things – particularly LCCs. We’ve been talking about revolutionising that space for a very long time but the experience hasn’t changed that much.
You can enhance your soft products. You can enhance your training. But fundamentally, the service – the routine in the aircraft tube – has not changed for decades.
We had the promise of integrated IFE into the galley 20 years ago – where you could just sit and play with the IFE, order something and someone would come up. It’s barely touched the surface for a lot of airlines. Although there’s a lot of promise and a lot of conversation, there’s still very little to show for all of that.
Flying around, seeing for myself and trying to understand what best practices and innovation are. I don’t see much difference from where we were 20 years ago. I still haven’t seen a revolutionary jump.
Hope for the future
I still believe there’s hope, particularly with inflight connectivity. High-speed inflight connectivity is available to the crew and to customers universally. I believe there is light at the end of the tunnel. But who pays for universal connectivity on an LCC?
We’re going to have to be far more sophisticated. What does that look like in the LCC context? If you really want to innovate, then you need connectivity and hardware. That’s all going to cost money. And the big queston is: is the return going to justify the level of investment?
