RIYADH: Emirati government-owned low-cost airline flydubai has announced its plans to kick off flights to key destinations across Europe and Asia in 2023. 

New destinations include European cities such as Milan and Cagliari in Italy as well as Corfu in Greece. Asian tourist hotspots such as Pattaya and Krabi – both of which are in Thailand –are also part of the new planned routes. 

In addition to this, the low-cost carrier will also resume flights to Al Hofuf city located in Saudi Arabia as of Nov. 24. 

The launch of the six new routes will elevate flydubai’s network to a total of 113 destinations across 53 countries. This figure poses the largest number of destinations the airline has served since its launch back in 2008. 

Commenting on the expansion of the airline’s network, flydubai CEO Ghaith Al Ghaith, said: “Dubai’s aviation industry has made a swift recovery, and our agility combined with our strong business model has enabled us to grow our operations and to achieve this significant milestone. With 113 destinations now available to book, we look forward to offering our passengers more options for travel across our ever-growing network.” 

Since the beginning of 2022, flydubai started flights to over 20 destinations including but not limited to Pisa and Catania in Italy, Osh in Kyrgyzstan as well as Samarkand and Namangan in Uzbekistan. 

Earlier this year, flydubai reported a strong performance in the first quarter, as the low-cost carrier posted a 114 percent rise in passengers from the same period last year, the airline said in a statement.   

The airline said it operated 19,000 flights and carried 2.35 million passengers during the period.    

Moreover, the airline also witnessed an increase in demand in the first quarter for connecting traffic with 43 percent of the passengers connecting to the carrier’s network compared to 28 percent for the same period last year. 

Last year, the airline signed an agreement for handling services with the Saudi Ground Services Co. for a period of five years, with a value exceeding 100 million Emirati dirhams ($27.2 million), Al Bayan paper reported.  

Under the agreement, SGS will undertake ground handling services for flydubai in all the Kingdom’s airports including the 11 airports in which the airline operates.