Saudia
flag-carrier airline of Saudi Arabia
Saudia is the first flag carrier of Saudi Arabia, headquartered in Jeddah. Its main hub is King Abdulaziz International Airport in Jeddah, with secondary hubs at Prince Mohammad bin Abdulaziz International Airport in Medina and King Fahd International Airport in Dammam, and a hub at King Khalid International Airport in Riyadh, which it plans to vacate by 2030 for the launch of Riyadh Air.
Saudia primarily serves the Middle East and North Africa market and operates scheduled domestic and international flights to over 100 destinations across Africa, Asia, Europe, and North America. Charter flights are typically operated during the Ramadan and Hajj seasons. The airline has been a member of the SkyTeam airline alliance since 29 May 2012, becoming the first carrier from the Middle East to join the alliance. Saudia is also a founding member of the Arab Air Carriers' Organization, having joined in 1965.
History
Early years
When U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt presented a Douglas DC-3 as a gift to King Abdulaziz in 1945, the event marked the kingdom's gradual development of civil aviation. The nation's flag carrier, Saudia, was founded as Saudi Arabian Airlines in September 1945 as a fully owned government agency under the control of the Ministry of Defense, with Trans World Airlines (TWA) running the airline under a management contract.
The now-demolished Jeddah Airport, close to Jeddah, was the flag carrier's main base. Among the airline's early operations was a special flight from Lydda (Lod) in Palestine (today in Israel, site of Ben Gurion Airport), a British Mandate at that time, to carry Hajj pilgrims to Jeddah.
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The citation trail is more important than the brevity of the summary: it shows where individual claims can be examined in context. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 22, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q541179. VIAF identifies the subject as 132254322. The Library of Congress control number is n85079289. 6 of 8 selected statements include explicit references; 4 carry qualifiers and 2 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 2030, 2012, 1965 and 1945.
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This entry incorporates text from “Saudia” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.