49 sr fare nasair adds 300 weekly flights to its domestic network
- To meet the increasing demand on low budget flights in the Kingdom
nas air, the first budget carrier to fly in the Kingdom, announced today that it had reached an agreement with Saudi Arabian Airlines to take over several public service obligation routes end of October in accordance with the Air Traffic Privatization act announced lately by GACA.
Under this act, GACA granted licenses to budget carriers to operate in the Kingdom, and set mandatory destinations to be served by each airline. In this light, part of the domestic routes operated by Saudi Arabian airline like Dammam, Tabuk, Abha, Gassim, Hail among others, will gradually move to nas air, and Saudia will stop serving these destinations as of October 28th 2007.
The airline is set to offer lower fares on the new routes, to invite all Saudi citizens to discover the excitement of flying within the Kingdom on nasair. 49 SR seats on all routes will be available for sale on flynas.com, through the call center and travel agents for booking period between September 18th and September 30th and travel between October 29th and end of March 2008. Since it launched in February 2007, nas air has gained a respectable reputation for its punctuality figures performance, over 90% depart-on-time rates.
Announcing nas air’s major expansion, Taher Agueel, NAS President said: “nasair recognizes the high demand for budget airline services connecting the capital Riyadh with other destinations in Saudi Arabia. We are delighted to be adding other attractive routes to our network. A greater choice of routes is good news for passengers, and is also a major boost for tourism in the Kingdom, which will now enjoy an upsurge in year-round visitors and benefit the local economy.”
“When we started operations last February, nas air has promised the Saudi public affordable fares and safe transportation, to facilitate travel for all segments of the population. Today, is a milestone for the Kingdom, with our airline providing more available seats accessible to everyone, in order to save time flying, instead of using the bus or car. Indeed, this airline is all about people, those who want to fly and those who make that happen” added Agueel.
With these new destinations, nasair is expected to triple fold the number of passengers it carries from the capital Riyadh to the different cities throughout the Kingdom in under a year, while the number of routes has grown from 4 to 23 , making nasair the leading airline serving different regions in the Kingdom. The airline’s fleet expansion from two to seven A320s and B737s aircrafts, is set to increase the capacity to serve these routes, and increase the number of weekly flights from 70 to 358 with a regular timetable. The airline is growing 500% in daily number of flights, a first in the Kingdom, and it takes all the efforts from GACA and all dedicated NAS employees to deliver this massive growth.
