Saudi carriers offer free stopover visa

Saudi carrier 'flynas', a leading low-cost airline in the Middle East, sees tremendous potential to scale up operations between Qatar and Saudi Arabia, its vice-president (International Sales) Abdulilah Suliman Aleadi said Monday.
Currently, flynas operates daily to Riyadh and Jeddah with the state-of-the-art Airbus A320neo, Aleadi told Gulf Times.
flynas is the only budget airline, which operates daily flights from Doha to Jeddah and Riyadh.
He said flynas looks to serve many more Qataris and expatriates living in the country as Saudi Arabia offers many attractive touristic destinations in the Kingdom.
Expatriates, he said, can make use of kingdom’s new ‘Stopover visa’ facility, which is offered free of charge, under which all passengers travelling either on Saudia or flynas through any airport in Saudi Arabia to their final destination are eligible.
A passenger can apply for the ‘Stopover visa’ at the time of booking his / her flight through flynas.
flynas passengers can apply electronically for the ‘Stopover visa’ through its website. The stopover visa application will be passed automatically to the unified national visa platform at Saudi Arabia’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs to process and issue the electronic visa immediately within four hours as maximum and send it to the beneficiary via e-mail, the airline said on its website.
Aleadi said flynas now operates 1500 weekly flights to more than 70 domestic and international destinations including those across the GCC, India, Egypt, Turkey, Georgia, Azerbaijan and CIS.
A recent flynas press release said the airline doubled annual growth in operation and performance during 2022, by recording 91% growth in passenger numbers to 8.7mn; flights by 45% to 66,000 and seat capacity by 46%.
Additionally, flynas launched some 16 new destinations and 30 new routes as its fleet upscaled to 43 aircraft.
Moreover, the company's board of directors approved raising the booking orders of 250 aircraft, in line with the goals of the Saudi Vision 2030, and the civil aviation strategy to reach 330mn passengers, 250 international destinations and 100mn tourists annually.
Meanwhile, flynas opened its office in Doha in Fereej Abdul Aziz on B-Ring Road, adjacent to Avens Travel and Tours.
Abdulilah Sulaiman Aleadi, Abdulla M al-Mousa, senior manager (planning and bilateral relations) and Ahmed al-Rayes, chairman of Al Rayes Group, jointly opened the office in the presence of Mousa al-Bahri, flynas corporate communications manager, Fahad al-Qahtani, senior manager (Ground operations), and Syed Mazharudheen, regional manager (Gulf and Middle East).
Naser Karukappadath , managing director of Avens Travel and Tours, the GSA of flynas in Qatar, along with Ali Anakkayan, flynas Doha manager, welcomed the dignitaries.