Riyadh Air Launches Daily Riyadh-Dhaka 787-9 Service on 7 August

Riyadh Air will launch a daily service between Riyadh and Dhaka on 7 August 2026, deploying the Boeing 787-9 on its first route to Bangladesh. The service connects the carrier’s home base at King Khalid International Airport in the Saudi capital with Hazrat Shahjalal International Airport in Dhaka, with tickets already on sale through the airline’s website and mobile app.

Route overview

The sector covers approximately 4,400 kilometres, or around 2,380 nautical miles, a block of roughly five and a half hours that sits at the boundary between medium- and long-haul operations; bigairports.com classifies the existing Dhaka-Riyadh city pair as long haul. A daily rotation gives Riyadh Air seven weekly frequencies in each direction, and based on the carrier’s 290-seat 787-9 layout the schedule adds just over 2,000 seats per week each way to the market. Ticket sales opened across the airline’s direct channels ahead of the launch, with distribution through its website, mobile app and appointed agents.

Dhaka was unveiled alongside Kuala Lumpur and Malaga in the same expansion announcement, and of the three it is the clearest play for labour and visiting-friends-and-relatives traffic. Bangladesh is one of the largest sources of migrant workers to the Gulf, and Riyadh is among the primary destinations.

Riyadh Air’s network build-out

Riyadh Air is wholly owned by Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund and was established in March 2023 under chief executive Tony Douglas. The carrier flew its first commercial service on 26 October 2025, from Riyadh to London Heathrow, and has been layering new destinations onto its King Khalid International hub since. The Dhaka announcement came as part of what the airline describes as a growing list of new routes for 2026.

The airline was created as the kingdom’s second flag carrier alongside Jeddah-based Saudia, positioned as a digitally led full-service operator, with a stated target of serving more than 100 destinations by 2030 in support of the Saudi Aviation Strategy. Dhaka extends the network into South Asia, one of the largest origin markets for inbound traffic to the kingdom, and adds a volume market to a route map so far weighted towards Europe, the Gulf and regional points.

About the aircraft

The Boeing 787-9 is the backbone of Riyadh Air’s launch fleet. The carrier ordered 39 of the type, with options for 33 more, when it was unveiled in March 2023, and has since added 60 A321neo-family narrowbodies and 25 Airbus A350-1000s to its order book. Built around a largely composite airframe, the 787-9 burns roughly 20 per cent less fuel than the previous-generation wide-bodies it replaces, according to Boeing.

Riyadh Air’s 787-9s are configured with 290 seats in four cabins: four Business Elite suites, 24 Business suites, 39 Premium seats and 223 in Economy. Powered by General Electric GEnx engines, the type has a range of around 14,000 kilometres, so the Riyadh-Dhaka sector uses well under a third of its capability. The 787-9’s belly hold also gives the route meaningful cargo capacity, relevant on a corridor where Bangladesh’s ready-made garment industry generates steady air-freight demand.

The airports

King Khalid International is Riyadh’s gateway and currently fields 138 routes, according to bigairports.com network data. Its densest link is domestic, Jeddah, with 910 tracked flights across four operators, followed by Dubai on 406 flights and Cairo, where nine operators share 272 flights. Long-haul flying is anchored by London Heathrow, served by five operators on 146 flights, and the airport already handles substantial South Asian traffic, with eight operators linking it to Islamabad on 65 tracked flights. The airport is Riyadh Air’s home base and is set to be folded into the planned King Salman International Airport development, designed around six parallel runways.

Hazrat Shahjalal International runs a tighter network of 48 routes, and its densest services are domestic: Chittagong on 284 tracked flights, Cox’s Bazar on 262 and Sylhet on 254. International capacity leans on the Gulf and Southeast Asia, where Dubai leads on 160 flights, ahead of Kuala Lumpur (107), Sharjah (93), Bangkok (77), Kuwait City (72), Singapore (68), Jeddah (65), Muscat (60) and Doha (57). The existing Riyadh link, at 45 flights, already ranks among the airport’s larger long-haul markets alongside Jeddah and Kuwait City. The airport’s third terminal, built with Japanese financing, is intended to lift annual capacity to around 22 million passengers as it moves into full operation.

Market context and competition

The Riyadh-Dhaka market sits on one of the world’s largest labour corridors. Saudi Arabia hosts more than 2.5 million Bangladeshi nationals, the biggest overseas Bangladeshi population anywhere, and the kingdom is consistently among the top sources of remittances to Bangladesh. Religious travel adds a second layer of demand through Hajj and Umrah pilgrimages, which move through both Riyadh and Jeddah.

bigairports.com data shows the existing Dhaka-Riyadh pair served by three operators with 45 tracked flights; Riyadh Air will arrive as the fourth carrier on the route, competing with incumbents including Biman Bangladesh Airlines and Saudia. The parallel Dhaka-Jeddah market is denser still, with four operators and 65 flights, while one-stop itineraries over Dubai, Doha and Kuwait City give Gulf hub carriers a substantial share of Saudi-Bangladesh traffic.

For Dhaka, the launch adds a new wide-body operator and more than 2,000 weekly seats in each direction on a heavily travelled corridor. For Riyadh Air, it is the carrier’s first scheduled service to Bangladesh and a test of demand segments beyond the business and leisure routes that opened its network; load factors on the pair will indicate how the start-up performs in a price-sensitive, high-volume market. The first departure from Riyadh is scheduled for 7 August 2026.