Saudia airline has announced that it will launch weekly flights from NEOM Bay Airport to Dubai in late June, and plans a direct route to London.
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The airport represents a “vital artery” for visitors traveling to the planned city, NEOM CEO Nazmi al-Nasr said in a statement.
NEOM is situated in the northwestern corner of the Kingdom, around 1,500 kilometers from Riyadh.
Saudia operated its first-ever flights from capital Riyadh to the NEOM site in January of 2019.
The under-construction megacity currently employs 1,500 people including local and international experts from more than 65 countries.
The project was announced in 2017 by Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman as part of his Vision 2030 plan to diversify the economy away from oil.
It is part of a raft of developments in the Kingdom including the Red Sea Project, which is due to welcome its first tourists in 2023.
The project is intended to boost tourism both domestically and internationally, as well as real estate sales.
In January 2021 the Crown Prince announced that a 170 kilometer long belt of communities would be built in NEOM.
‘The Line,’ as it will be known, is slated to be a zero-carbon system with no roads or cars.
Commuters are instead expected to use high-speed transit systems, which reportedly will take no more than 20 minutes to ferry people from one end of the city to the other.
Promotional material for NEOM also touts it as a low-carbon sustainable city, the layout of which emphasizes physical exercise.
The project’s sports director Neil Coupland said in an interview with Al Arabiya English that those behind the project intend it to be the “most active place on the planet,” with three-quarters of the population exercising at least three hours a week.
Out of the planned megaprojects in the Kingdom, NEOM was the most popular choice for homebuyers, according to a Knight Frank survey of 1003 households and 55 high net worth individuals.
Read more:
Saudi megaproject NEOM will be subject to Kingdom’s regulations: SPA
NEOM first choice among giga-projects for Saudi Arabian homebuyers: Survey
NEOM sports director says megacity will have ‘most active’ population on the planet
