Delta Air Lines and Riyadh Air will pursue a broad range of customer-facing benefits as part of a newly signed Strategic Cooperation Memorandum of Understanding. The deal makes Delta the exclusive partner across North America and Riyadh Air the exclusive partner “in Riyadh and beyond.”
Riyadh Air shares Delta’s commitment to providing an elevated customer experience, which is why we’re looking forward to building and expanding this partnership in the months and years ahead.
– Delta CEO Ed Bastian
The two airlines expect to pursue interline and codeshare reciprocity, as well as loyalty reciprocity as part of the program. It could also include broader facets of commercial aviation operations, including ground handling and maintenance services.
Longer term, the carriers also intent to pursue an immunized joint venture, allowing collaboration on route planning and fares. Delta also indicated it will pursue the launch of nonstop service to Riyadh as part of the agreement, though the timeline for that (and all the rest of the plans) is unclear.
The exclusivity of the partnership is notable in that Saudia is already a Delta partner and member of the SkyTeam alliance. Presumably Delta and Riyadh Air figured out a way to not kill that relationship, while still making this new one work.
The two carriers are also vague about what “and beyond” means in the context of how Riyadh Air will serve as Delta’s exclusive partner. If that is simply for onward connections from Riyadh it should not be hard to make work. It seems unlikely Delta would shift other, already ATI-covered markets in Asia to be exclusively served with Riyadh Air.
One such market could be India. While India has limited the growth of traffic rights from most other countries in the Middle East, the country increased the allocation of seats for Saudi Arabian airlines in 2019, with the potential to reach 50,000 per week in each direction. Indian carriers currently use nearly all of their allocation, but Saudi-based airlines still have significant capacity that can be added to the sub-continent. Presumably much of that is already earmarked for Riyadh Air as the carrier’s fleet grows.
Riyadh Air expects to launch operations in 2025, funded with a $50 billion war chest from Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund. The government-backed airline aims to serve 100 destinations globally by the end of the decade.
While Delta has objected to government-funded carriers operating to the US in the past, those concerns have mostly disappeared over the past few years.
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