Two and a half weeks after it flew its very first paying passengers, Saudi Arabia’s brand-new airline has been handed the keys to the world’s second-biggest aviation market. Riyadh Air is going to China.

The Civil Aviation Administration of China has cleared the carrier to fly to Beijing and Shanghai — three weekly flights to Beijing Daxing and four to Shanghai Pudong. For an airline that only launched scheduled service on 1 July, reaching China this fast is a statement of intent.

From zero to China in a fortnight

Riyadh Air is not a legacy carrier easing into a new route. It is a start-up backed by Saudi Arabia’s sovereign wealth fund, built from scratch to turn the Saudi capital into a global connecting hub and to carry the country’s Vision 2030 tourism ambitions on its wings. Its first flight left for London barely a fortnight ago.

Getting Chinese regulatory approval this early matters because China is hard to crack: slots, bilateral rights and CAAC clearance are all tightly controlled. Winning seven weekly frequencies into Beijing and Shanghai gives Riyadh Air an instant foothold in one of the most lucrative long-haul markets on earth.

The China plan is not new — it is a promise being kept. Back in 2023, chief executive Tony Douglas laid out exactly this ambition.

A hub built at speed

Douglas has said incoming deliveries will grow the fleet to eight aircraft by the end of July, with the network reaching 22 destinations by March 2027. The airline is even weighing an order for 30 more 787 Dreamliners on top of its existing commitments — a sign it intends to scale fast rather than cautiously.

The backbone of all this is the 787-9: long range, efficient, and comfortable enough to make a nine-hour hop to Shanghai a selling point rather than an endurance test. For Riyadh Air, each new long-haul city is another spoke in a hub-and-spoke map it is drawing in real time.

The bigger game

China and Saudi Arabia have been deepening ties across trade, energy and tourism, and direct air links are the connective tissue that makes those relationships tangible. For travellers, it means a new one-stop option between East Asia and Europe, the Gulf and Africa, routed through Riyadh instead of the established hubs at Dubai, Doha or Abu Dhabi.

Those incumbents have decades of head start. But Riyadh Air has money, modern jets and a government determined to make it work — and now, a fortnight into its life, it already has China on the map.

Inside Riyadh Air’s new 787-9 and its inaugural service.

Sources: Aviation Week; Simple Flying; Aviation A2Z; Travel And Tour World.