Sharing two recent flynas announcements that are personal to me.

The first: 3 weekly Riyadh-Kochi flights from today (Sept 2).

I built the business case for Kochi when I joined flynas in 2022, and kept pushing it after. It has taken longer than I would have liked, and flynas has lost some of the LCC first-mover advantage in the market in the meantime. But seeing it finally materialise is gratifying.

This one mattered because of who uses it. The Kerala diaspora in the Kingdom is large, and the people moving between these two countries are travelling for work and family. Post-Covid, this route had a single operator, and monopoly pricing on a route flown out of necessity rather than choice lands hardest on exactly the passengers who can least absorb it. Better connectivity for the diaspora is something I've consistently voiced for. It changes something real for them.

The second is closer to the core work I did: the development of a training centre in Riyadh, with three flight simulators initially, capacity to scale to 14, and an investment of over SAR 200 million.

I led the technical training stream within the cost transformation programme (LEAP).

As flynas grew, we were spending heavily sending pilots and crew to external facilities - fees, travel, accommodation, per diems, with limited control over slot availability, training environment and quality. The cost was visible. The capacity constraint was the bigger problem, and it was only going to become more acute as the fleet scaled. The cadet programme made that sharper still.

I worked closely with Flight Operations and the Head of Training (Capt. Fahad Alyahya) to develop the initial business case and make the case for building an in-house capability before the scale of the airline made the problem larger.

Both outcomes started as business problems.

It's good to see how both of these initiatives are now part of XY's growth story, especially the infrastructure to build training capacity alongside the airline's phenomenal growth.

Congrats to the respective teams at XY!

(This write-up is for educational/informational purposes only. Views are my own)