Another foreign airline has decided to stop flying to Jeddah. Swiss Airlines has joined Singapore Airlines, Olympic Airways, Alitalia and KLM in suspending flights to the city. Yet again, economic reasons are cited.
We could take a positive view and say that it means more passengers for Saudia, but that would be deliberately obtuse. Saudia, too, recently announced that it may have to cut jobs. We could point out that the aviation industry worldwide is suffering — but that too would be self-deception.
The reality is that the airlines involved are not suspending flights to Dubai or Bahrain or even Riyadh; it is Jeddah that has been given the chop. Does this say something about the city’s economic position, its until-now accepted status as the Saudi Arabia’s economic capital? And if it is Saudi Arabia’s economic capital, does that say something about the Saudi economy?
A bit of both. The past decade has seen a marked shift in economic importance from Jeddah to Riyadh. It is not one that Jeddah likes to accept, persisting in the belief that it remains the more important economic center. That can no longer be taken as true. Airlines are barometers of business. If they think that Jeddah is dispensable, but not Riyadh, it must be because not enough businessmen want to go there.
However, these cutbacks also say something about the wider Saudi economy. For every airline no longer flying to Jeddah, others have reduced flights — not just to Jeddah but also to Riyadh. Indeed the question has to be asked whether some that have stopped flying to Jeddah would have cut the Riyadh route as well were it not for the fact that such a move would be seen as politically motivated.
Economic explanations cannot be limited to simply saying that business in the Kingdom is down. Airlines are not only barometers of business, they are barometers of tourism. A positive explanation is that fewer foreigners are working here because of Saudization, at least fewer foreigners in higher-paid jobs. Another is that Saudis are taking fewer vacations abroad — good for the local tourist industry, not for international flights. But that is because money is tight.
There is another side to this and it is anything but positive. Tourism into the Kingdom is largely religious and moves through Jeddah. As anyone knows who flies regularly to the city from abroad, many passengers on the flights are on Umrah; if overall numbers are down, Umrah visitors are down as well.
