Photo: neom.com
The low-cost airline will become only the third airline to have NEOM Bay Airport in its route network. Moreover, Flydubai — the only foreign carrier to operate any flights to NEOM after the grand opening of the airport in 2019.
The mega-scale project is funded by Saudi Arabia's sovereign wealth fund and led by reformist Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman.
The name NEOM comes from the ancient Greek prefix “neo”, which means “new”, and the first letter of the name of Mohammed bin Salman.
NEOM is actually not even a city, but an entire district located on extreme northwest of Saudi Arabia on the Red Sea near Egypt, Israel and Jordan.
Several global architectural projects will be created there. Today, the most famous of them is a new city called The Line — a vertical city stretching along a neat line only 200 meters wide and 170 km long. It will be home to 9 million people.
The first “modules” The Line is due to open as early as 2026, but before that, an industrial complex known as Oxagon will open next year, and the first facility intended for residents and tourists will be a luxury resort island in the Red Sea called Sindalah. Another tourist “cluster” — Trojena — a resort in a mountainous area.
But until all this beauty is built, there are no reasons to fly “to the ends of the world” not much really.
Currently, the majority of flights to NEOM are operated by the national airline. These are mainly domestic flights, but there are also international — to Dubai and London. It is not known exactly what their load is, but apparently they are mainly used to transport workers to and from construction sites.
At the moment, this is perhaps the main and only reason for visiting NEOM, but in connection with this that the project is in the early stages of implementation, many more workers will be needed, and most of them are expected to be migrant workers coming from the Asian subcontinent.
In the future, there is even talk of creating NEOM's own airline, although the wealth fund Saudi Arabia continues to prepare the launch of a new carrier from Riyadh, which has said it will compete on equal terms with Emirates and Qatar Airways.