Virgin Points should be redeemable on Riyadh Air, if you want to try their amazing cabins

Last week we published an interview with Tony Douglas, CEO of upstart Saudi airline Riyadh Air.

Riyadh Air has just unveiled the cabins which will be used on its first long-haul services, and they look very impressive.

Many readers were dismayed that Riyadh Air was not planning to join an airline alliance, and so there would be no easy way to redeem miles to try the new service. However, it seems we were mistaken.

Virgin Atlantic launched flights to Riyadh this week. We didn’t cover the story but our article on the initial announcement is here.

(The second new route mentioned in that article, to Accra, now appears to be permanently dead.)

One snippet of information which emerged during the launch trip is that Virgin Atlantic is planning a partnership deal with Riyadh Air.

Given that London is likely to be Riyadh Air’s first destination later this year – we understand that it has the Heathrow slots it needs – it doesn’t immediately make sense why a partnership with Virgin Atlantic would be necessary.

It would, however, allow Riyadh Air to feed in to Virgin Atlantic’s North American network until it can get its own US services established. Operating two Riyadh Air flights per day alongside one Virgin Atlantic flight would give it full coverage across the day on the key Heathrow to Riyadh route.

I asked Riyadh Air if it would be possible to spend Virgin Points on Riyadh Air. Whilst non-committal about a Virgin Atlantic deal, it told us that it was planning to have ‘earn and burn’ with its airline partners.

You may be able to try Riyadh Air’s impressive looking cabins without spending a fortune after all ….