On 10 June 2026, a Boeing 787-9 in a striking deep-violet livery rolled to a stop at London Heathrow. For most travellers it was just another widebody from the Gulf. For the aviation industry, it was the moment a three-year-old PowerPoint finally became a real airline.

That was Riyadh Air’s first revenue flight — and Saudi Arabia’s loud, well-funded entry into a Gulf long-haul market already ruled by Emirates, Qatar Airways and Etihad.

From Launch Video to Heathrow

Riyadh Air was unveiled in 2023 as a wholly owned venture of Saudi Arabia’s sovereign wealth fund, the Public Investment Fund. For three years it existed mostly as branding: a much-admired lavender-and-indigo livery, a slick marketing campaign, and a very large order book. The actual flying kept slipping into the future.

Then the jets started arriving. Riyadh Air took its first two 787-9 Dreamliners on 5 June 2026 and a third two days later, and with metal finally on the ramp it pulled its launch forward by roughly three weeks. London went first.

Six Cities in Six Weeks

The launch schedule is deliberately aggressive. After London on 10 June come Jeddah (14 June), Dubai (18 June), Cairo (25 June), Madrid (17 July) and Manchester (23 July) — every one of them flown by the 787-9. It is a statement of intent rather than a cautious toe in the water.

Douglas, who previously ran Etihad, knows exactly how hard it is to build a Gulf hub carrier from scratch — and how lucrative it can be if it works.

The Vision 2030 Bet

Riyadh Air is not really an airline project; it is a national one. Saudi Arabia wants to convert its geography — perched between Europe, Africa and Asia — into the same kind of connecting machine that made Dubai and Doha global names. The plan calls for Riyadh to handle vast passenger volumes and to anchor the kingdom’s push to diversify away from oil.

The obstacles are real: the Gulf hub market is crowded, the incumbents are formidable, and brand loyalty takes decades to build. But Riyadh Air has the one thing every startup airline dreams of — effectively bottomless backing — and, as of June 2026, it finally has passengers.

Sources: Riyadh Air; Public Investment Fund; AeroTime; One Mile at a Time; Aerospace Global News.