DUBAI: Riyadh Air CEO Tony Douglas said on Monday the Saudi startup carrier would be ready to buy Boeing aircraft destined for Chinese airlines if they are not delivered due to the escalating trade war between the US and China.
Boeing is looking to resell potentially dozens of planes locked out of China by tariffs after repatriating a third jet to the US in a delivery standoff that drew new criticism of Beijing from US President Donald Trump.
“What we’ve done... is made it quite clear to Boeing, should that ever happen, and the keyword there is should, we’ll happily take them all,” Douglas said in an interview with Reuters on the sidelines of the Arabian Travel Market conference.
Boeing took the rare step of publicly flagging the potential aircraft sale during an analyst call last week, saying that there would be no shortage of buyers in a tight jet market.
Riyadh Air, backed by Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund, has been ordering planes from both Boeing and Airbus ahead of its launch, including 60 narrow-body A321-family jets from Airbus in October and up to 72 Boeing 787 Dreamliners ordered in March 2023.
The airline does not expect delivery delays from either planemaker to be resolved any time soon.
Douglas said Riyadh Air had not seen any impact on demand for travel to and from the Kingdom’s capital from global macroeconomic uncertainty, adding that the company plans to announce an order for wide-body jets this summer.
The airline, which is aiming to launch in the fourth quarter, has hired 500 employees and intends to increase its workforce to 1,000 over the next nine to 12 months, Douglas said. Thereafter, hiring of pilots and cabin crew will steadily continue as aircraft are delivered.
Saudi Arabia is seeking to acquire a slice of the global travel industry, including business travel, as the Kingdom pours billions of dollars into developing giga-projects to diversify its economy away from hydrocarbons.
This includes the Dubai to Riyadh route, which is often used by bankers, lawyers, consultants and influencers. Douglas said the less than 2-hour flight represents one of the world’s most profitable routes in the world for an airline, from a revenue per kilometer standpoint.
The restart of flights from the UAE into Syria, and flying through the Syrian airspace is “probably a signal that things are at the margin moving in the right direction,” he added.
