Riyadh’s New Hub Airline Meets a Closed Capital Airport

Saudi Arabia’s civil aviation authority said a Houthi strike on King Khalid International Airport on 10 October killed 12 people and wounded 309. Operations at the capital’s main airport were suspended the same afternoon.

The field is also the home base of Riyadh Air, the Public Investment Fund carrier that began flying in June. Foreign airlines had already started pulling Riyadh flights after earlier strikes that week, and Europe’s aviation safety agency had widened the parts of Saudi airspace it tells carriers to avoid.

Saturday’s Strike Closed the Capital Airport

The General Authority of Civil Aviation said the Saturday attack killed four Saudi citizens, two Bangladeshis, and one person each from the United States, Jordan, Palestine, Syria, Sudan and Egypt. Some of the wounded were in critical condition. GACA said the dead and injured included civilian passengers and airport staff, and that damage to the buildings was still being checked.

King Khalid is the kingdom’s second-busiest airport after Jeddah. Saudi Arabia’s General Authority for Statistics counted 296,800 flights there in 2025, about 813 a day, serving a city of 8 million people. On Saturday those movements stopped. Flight tracking sites showed inbound aircraft turning away, many of them toward Jeddah, while passengers with bags stood outside a metro station on the airport road.

The Saturday strike was not the first hit on the same airport that week. GACA said two attacks on 8 October killed three Saudi nationals, and a parked Saudia Airbus caught fire on the tarmac. Saudia confirmed that one of its captains, Hamoud Ali al-Kalthami, was among the dead. The airport reopened that Thursday evening after staff were told the field had been assessed. It did not get the same chance after Saturday.

THE WEEK THE CAPITAL AIRPORT WAS HIT

1. 6 to 7 October 2026: GACA said attacks on King Khalid and Abha International Airport killed three people and injured 36.
2. 8 October 2026: Two further attacks on King Khalid kill three Saudis, including a Saudia captain, and destroy a parked Airbus. Cirium records 169 of 378 departures cancelled.
3. 9 October 2026: EASA revises its Saudi conflict-zone bulletin and adds airspace in the northwest of the kingdom.
4. 10 October 2026: GACA says a strike on King Khalid kills 12 and wounds 309. Airport operations are suspended.
5. 11 October 2026: GACA reports another attack on the Riyadh airport and a separate attack on King Fahd International Airport in Dammam. Assessments continue.

On Sunday the Saudi-led coalition said an unidentified projectile struck near Terminal 4 and started a fire, and that air defences intercepted a cruise missile near the airport. GACA said people were injured and that it was still checking the buildings. India’s embassy in Riyadh said one of its citizens who had been wounded on Saturday later died. As of Sunday evening, GACA had not announced a restart of flights.

#Statement | An attack targeted King Khalid International Airport in Riyadh, and operations are temporarily suspended.#GACA pic.twitter.com/5vhxoGBVc7

— هيئة الطيران المدني (@ksagaca) October 10, 2026

The Houthis claimed the capital airport as a military target and told airlines to stay out of Saudi airspace, with an exception they described for the airspace over Mecca and Medina. Coalition spokesman Major General Turki al-Malki called the Saturday strike a “full-fledged war crime” and said the coalition would respond.

Which Airlines Have Stopped Flying to Riyadh?

Lufthansa Group was the first large European carrier to set a firm stop. A spokesperson said the group’s airlines would suspend Riyadh flying through 16 October because of “current developments in the Middle East.” Indian carriers moved the same day, then lengthened the pause as the airport stayed shut.

Air India flight AI2243, already airborne from Delhi, turned back on 8 October. IndiGo diverted a Hyderabad service to Dammam and later sent some Riyadh traffic through that city. Akasa Air first dropped its Kochi pair, then halted every Riyadh flight. On Thursday, Cirium counted 169 of 378 scheduled departures from King Khalid cancelled or not operating, nearly 45 percent, plus 124 of 369 arrivals. Combined, about 39 percent of the day’s 747 planned movements did not run. Saudia accounted for 97 of 140 of its own departures. Flynas cancelled 30 of 91, flyadeal 20 of 54, and Riyadh Air 2 of 15. The three older Saudi carriers made up 147 of the 169 cancelled departures. FlightRadar24 later showed 131 flights to and from Riyadh cancelled by 13:05 GMT on Friday.

ANNOUNCED RIYADH STOPS AFTER THE STRIKES

Those dates come from airline notices collected through 11 October and will move if the field stays closed. Flydubai had already dropped Riyadh and Yanbu through 10 October and Abha through 11 October, then stretched the Riyadh halt to 14 October. Philippine Airlines cancelled Manila flights PR654 and PR655 through 11 October. Qatar Airways and Kuwait Airways cut Riyadh services around the Saturday shutdown. Emirates, flydubai and Air Arabia cancelled Dubai and Abu Dhabi flying toward the capital into 12 October. Saudia and flynas kept publishing delays rather than a single end date, because their networks have nowhere else to live.

The people holding those tickets were told to take refunds, wait, or reroute through Dammam and Madinah and finish the trip by road. KKIA put a 24-hour “Ask Me” desk in its terminals and offered luggage storage for up to 15 days, which is a polite way of saying a lot of bags were going nowhere.

Europe’s Safety Agency Widened the Restricted Zone

EASA first published a Saudi conflict-zone bulletin on 30 September. On 9 October it issued revision R1 of CZIB-2026-09, valid until 16 November unless it is reviewed sooner, and it added a second polygon in the northwest of the country. The expanded conflict zone bulletin for Saudi airspace now tells operators not to fly at any altitude inside two blocks of the Jeddah flight information region, then to treat the rest of that region with caution.

These recurrent missile and drone attacks, together with the activation of air-defence systems, create an increased risk of misidentification of civil aircraft, as well as risks associated with missile and drone overflights, interception activity and falling debris.

European Union Aviation Safety Agency, CZIB-2026-09-R1

The bulletin says Houthi attacks in September spread from the Red Sea and the Gulf of Aden onto energy sites and aviation facilities, and that later strikes showed an ability to reach Riyadh, Tabuk, Medina and Yanbu. Southern and southwestern airspace remains the most exposed because it sits closest to Houthi-held Yemen. The new problem, EASA wrote, is that the campaign has shifted onto aviation itself, which raises the risk to aircraft on the ground and in the takeoff and landing phases, not only to overflights.

OPSGROUP, a membership body of almost 10,000 aviation professionals, went further on Friday. Its memo told members to avoid operations in Saudi Arabia entirely, “including the use of Saudi airports as en route alternates.” That line matters for flights that were never going to Riyadh. A Europe-Asia crew that can no longer file King Khalid or Dammam as a diversion has to carry more fuel, accept a longer track, or drop payload. The U.S. embassy told staff they needed special authorisation to use the airports in Riyadh, Jeddah and Dammam. The UK Foreign Office told British nationals to stay away from the Riyadh airport until it was secure.

King Khalid, Riyadh Air and the 2030 Target

Riyadh Air flew its first commercial service on 10 June 2026, a Dreamliner from this same airport to London Heathrow, three weeks ahead of the date it had sold. Chief executive Tony Douglas, who ran Etihad from 2018 to 2022, has described the carrier as the long-haul piece of Vision 2030, built to connect Riyadh to more than 100 destinations by the end of the decade. The airline is wholly owned by the Public Investment Fund. Saudia’s network is meant to tighten around Jeddah and pilgrimage traffic, which leaves the capital’s hub story with the new brand.

THE HUB THE STRIKES CLOSED

• Passenger target: Saudi civil aviation wants 330 million air passengers a year by 2030, up from 140.9 million in 2025.
• New airport: King Salman International Airport is planned for 120 million passengers a year beside the present King Khalid site.
• Network goal: Riyadh Air has said it will fly more than 100 cities by 2030 on a fleet order of up to 182 aircraft.
• Jakarta date: Three-weekly Riyadh-Jakarta flights are sold from 16 November 2026, the same date EASA’s current bulletin expires.

On 5 October, four days before EASA widened the zone and five days before Saturday’s strike, Riyadh Air opened bookings for Jakarta, calling it the 16th city on the map. Douglas said the route reflected “our strategic commitment to linking key global markets through Riyadh” on Boeing 787-9s. RX0869 is scheduled out of Riyadh at 22:50 on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays from 16 November. The return leaves Jakarta at 15:00 the next afternoon. Milan is listed from 16 December. Those are real seats on sale through an airport GACA had not cleared to reopen as of 11 October.

The PIF has said the airline should add more than $20 billion to non-oil GDP and support more than 200,000 jobs by 2030. That arithmetic assumes King Khalid, and later King Salman, can be sold to connecting passengers as a calm place to change planes. A parked widebody on fire and a terminal full of smoke are the images now travelling with the brand.

Umrah Travellers Were Inside When Smoke Filled the Hall

Saudi state television released terminal footage of Umrah pilgrims running as dust and smoke filled a hall. Community posts said a group of Bangladeshi religious teachers booked on Riyadh Air for Umrah were in the airport during the Saturday strike, and that one of the wounded later died. GACA’s own list already included two Bangladeshi dead. Prothom Alo’s English desk put 24 Bangladeshi wounded and about 500 of its nationals stranded; those extra figures have not been repeated by GACA, so they stay unverified. The shape of the crowd is still clear. This was not only a European long-haul story.

WHO THE SHUTDOWN ACTUALLY STRANDED

• Umrah traffic: Pilgrims were in the hall when Saturday’s strike hit, according to Saudi state television and GACA’s own account of civilian passengers among the dead.
• Indian crews and pax: Air India, Air India Express, IndiGo and Akasa Air all stopped Riyadh flying, and a Delhi service turned back mid-route.
• Gulf workers: Dammam became the overflow city, with road transfers into Riyadh after diversions, until Sunday’s attack on King Fahd Airport put that backup at risk too.
• Embassy warnings: The U.S., UK, Canada, Japan, Germany and Spain told citizens to avoid the Riyadh airport or to treat travel as essential only.

Indian carriers matter here because the kingdom’s labour and pilgrimage market still runs through Kerala, Hyderabad, Mumbai and Delhi far more than through Frankfurt. Air India Express had been selling Kochi, Kozhikode and Kannur; Akasa’s first cut was Kochi. Those are payroll and Umrah routes. When they stop, the people left in the terminal are the people the new hub is supposed to convert into transit traffic on the way to London, Madrid and Jakarta.

The Saudi Ministry of Foreign Affairs told citizens stuck abroad by cancelled flights to contact Saudi missions. GACA’s GACA follow-up statement on the airport attack kept the focus on injuries, inspections and a return to service, without a clock.

Southern Airports Lived With This Risk for Years

Abha, close to the Yemeni border, has been the usual Houthi aviation target. A cruise missile into the departure hall in June 2019 wounded at least 26 people. Later drone and rocket strikes in 2019, 2020 and 2021 repeatedly halted traffic for hours and sent shrapnel across the apron. ACLED, which tracks political violence, recorded 37 rocket and drone events against Saudi civilian airports between June and September 2019 in its study of years of rocket and drone hits on Saudi airports.

Riyadh was supposed to be a different problem. A Houthi missile aimed at King Khalid on 4 November 2017 was intercepted, and the coalition reported no damage. Interceptions over the capital happened again in 2018 and 2021. The working assumption in airline dispatch offices was that the south took the drones and the capital’s air defences held. EASA’s September bulletin already treated that assumption as stale. The October revision named Riyadh, Tabuk, Medina and Yanbu as places the Houthis could now reach, and it said the attacks had begun to concentrate on aviation facilities rather than only energy sites.

That is why OPSGROUP’s “do not even use them as alternates” line landed harder than a one-day cancellation. An airport that can be closed twice in four days, and hit again while inspectors are still inside, is not a reliable plan B for a flight from Europe to Asia. It is also a weak place to hang a sixth-freedom hub.

Energy Talks Went Ahead With the Runway Dark

The Ministry of Energy hosted international energy meetings in Riyadh on 11 October, and organisers said the sessions would proceed. Future Investment Initiative dates and a Crown Jewel wrestling date remain on the autumn calendar. Getting ministers into a closed-runway city is a convoy problem. Getting paying connecting passengers to trust the same city is an airline problem, and those are not the same thing.

Cathay Pacific’s halt runs to 31 January 2027. Singapore Airlines pushed a not-yet-launched nonstop to 28 March 2027. British Airways is out through 3 November and has already dropped Jeddah. Those are not two-day weather delays. They are carriers telling network planners to take Riyadh off the board into next year. Lufthansa’s window through 16 October looks short beside them, and it may not stay short if GACA cannot show a stable field.

Riyadh Air is still selling Jakarta from 16 November, which is also the day EASA’s current bulletin lapses if no one renews it. The seats assume the capital airport is open, the air defences hold, and a Dreamliner can sit on that tarmac overnight without becoming a target. GACA’s last word on 11 October was that another attack had landed, people were hurt, and the inspections were not finished.