DAMMAM, 27 August 2003 — British Airways may soon restart its operation from Jeddah and Riyadh, Arab News has learned. Senior airline staff are meeting today to review the security situation, airline sources told Arab News, and the stage is set for resumption of flights.
British Airways discontinued its flights from Saudi Arabia for security reasons earlier this month. According to a British Airways source in the Kingdom, the airline has been reviewing “the situation on a day-to-day basis and it hopes to resume flights at the earliest.”
British Airways used to operate four flights a week from Riyadh and Jeddah. Dammam’s King Fahd International Airport is not in its schedule. “For the time being KFIA is not under consideration for the resumption of flights,” the source said.
The airline, like many other European and Asian airlines discontinued its flights from KFIA for “technical reasons” some time ago, though apparently this involved financial aspects.
Several foreign airlines have been complaining about the high cost of flight operations from KFIA. Prince Sultan, second deputy premier and minister of defense and aviation, ordered a reduction in several tariffs charged by KFIA in order to make it more economically viable for foreign airlines. However, few airlines found those reductions sufficient.
Airlines instead started ferrying passengers to neighboring Bahrain via the King Fahd Causeway.
