Riyadh Air will launch with flights to London Heathrow, starting in October

As had been widely predicted, it seems that London will be one of the first (if not the first) long haul destination to launch Riyadh Air’s operations.

The start-up airline, which is backed by the Saudi Public Investment Fund, has acquired slots for flights to London Heathrow from British Airways.

This appears to be under the legacy BMI slot remedy procedure, which is still having an impact on schedules after 13 years.

The remedy was a condition BA’s acquisition of BMI in 2012, which require it to give up slots to any airline that wishes to operate on six routes where the European Commission felt competition was being weakened. The destinations are Aberdeen, Edinburgh, Nice, Cairo, Moscow and Riyadh.

It’s not often that airlines take up these slot options from British Airways. Virgin Atlantic’s short-lived Little Red service did so for domestic flights to Scotland in the early 2010s. Flybe also had a go at operating Heathrow to Aberdeen services in 2017.

Acquiring slots at Heathrow is often the biggest hindrance to launching flights, although it does have new entrant rules that make it easier for new airlines. I suspect that Riyadh Air felt that acquiring slots via the BMI remedy procedure was a more certain approach.

Based on the slot request form posted by reputable schedule analyst SeanM on X, it seems that Riyadh’s flights to Heathrow leave in the morning. The incoming flight will land in London at 7:30am before departing back to Riyadh at 9:30am.

Flight numbers (provisionally?) given are RX401 and RX402, with the route to launch at the start of the Winter 2025/2026 season. In the aviation world this begins on 26th October.

The slot request form implies that Riyadh Air will operate from Terminal 4. This is no surprise, given this is where the majority of the Gulf and Middle Eastern carriers operate from.

The flights will operate on Riyadh Air’s brand new fleet of Boeing 787-9s.

Riyadh Air CEO Tony Douglas previously told me it would launch operations when it had three Boeing 787-9s in its fleet. At present, Riyadh Air has just one – leased from Oman Air – which it will use as its technical spare in case of disruption. It is clearly confident that it can get its first two ‘official’ 787-9s in the coming months.

The new aircraft will feature the airline’s recently-revealed signature cabins, with four ‘business plus’ ‘Business Elite’ seats, 24 standard business class seats, 39 premium economy seats and 223 economy seats for a total of 290 passengers. This is two more than the listed capacity of 288 on the slot request form, but it’s possible that some seats will be blocked for crew use.

In addition to the London flights, Riyadh Air will also launch with flights to a regional destination to maximise aircraft utilisation. Here’s how Tony Douglas explained it to me:

“It will be a minimum of two destinations from day one. So let’s just imagine it. It’s City X in Europe. The machine comes back from City X in Europe, there will be a 90 minute turnaround in Riyadh, and then we’ll pick up City Y, which will be a three to four hour sector, right? And then back. What we’re trying to do, obviously, is get the utilisation of the airframe up, and it actually worked beautifully from a network planning perspective as well.”

We now know that London is City X. Where City Y will be has yet to be confirmed, although if the above is still true then it is unlikely to be Dubai, Abu Dhabi or another city in the Gulf: Riyadh to Dubai is a two-hour flight.

If you haven’t been following along, Riyadh Air is the largest and most ambitious airline start up in many years. The airline has big plans and wants to operate to 100 destinations by 2030, although aircraft delays are making that unlikely. The first flights were meant to launch this summer, after all.

The airline has 182 planes on order, comprising:

• 72 Boeing 787-9 (arriving from this year)
• 60 A321neos (arriving from 2026)
• 50 A350-1000 (delivery dates to be confirmed)

If you’re wondering why Saudi Arabia is launching a second flag carrier (after Saudia) then you might find my interview with CEO Tony Douglas enlightening.

As for what the Riyadh Air experience will be like? You can read my deep dive into all four classes on board Riyadh Air’s Boeing 787-9 fleet here and I suspect we will find ourselves in Riyadh to take a look before too long.

Whilst the airline is not joining an airline alliance, it is striking a lot of partnerships. One of these is with Virgin Atlantic and should allow for Virgin Points redemptions on its services.