UAE now has old Dubai airport (DXB), new Dubai airport (DWC) and Abu Dhabi (AUH) all within 130 km (80 miles) of each other.
KSA has Dubai Envy - it always aims to do what Dubai is doing now, but with about a 20-year time lag, and it often fails. For example, the Riyadh Financial District (KAFD) is largely empty, except for companies forced to go there by threats from the government.
> KSA has Dubai Envy - it always aims to do what Dubai is doing now, but with about a 20-year time lag, and it often fails. For example, the Riyadh Financial District (KAFD) is largely empty, except for companies forced to go there by threats from the government.
All it takes is for Saudi government regulation to mandate setting up in Saudi Freezones, and one will see Dubai's spigot drying up. Saudi's inefficiencies were the reason for Dubai's gains, and with that going away at a very rapid pace under MBS, I don't know what future Dubai has, except as a tax Haven.
But for that, the Saudis have an uphill battle trying to get Jeddah and Dammam ports on par with Dubai's Jebel Ali freezone. The holdover time for cargo in JAFZA is 3 days on average, compared to Jeddah's 45 days.
Dubai DIFC has English-language commercial law, with British Law as a backstop for appeals and ambiguity. I can't imagine KSA agreeing to that, and even if they did, nobody would trust them - it's a rather capricious absolute monarchy.
Dubai does not have oil, so it depends on its business environment, plus a little tourism. That will keep it honest. KSA is inefficient, inept, corrupt and positively dishonest, so it will never win.
And literally nobody on the planet wants to live in Riyadh.
Good luck catching a layover if you are Jewish or have an Israeli stamp on your passport. Last time I checked the staff of Saudi destined airlines wouldn't even let "undesirables" on an incoming flight...
I've been to Israel before, and I have visited KSA recently, no worries.
Things have changed a lot - there used to be a time when the same people wouldn't be allowed in Dubai, and now we have Israeli porn sites shooting videos of naked models on Dubai balconies.
This is a completely unfair and unfactual assumption you made.
I entered Saudi Arabia just this morning with a star of David necklace on my neck (yes it was under my shirt, but it wasn't hidden or anything). There was not even the slightest sign of discomfort nor disapproval. Just a friendly and helpful border officer who said, "Welcome to Kingdom. Have a wonderful time".
And this notion of separation into "undesirables" in Gulf countries is also just plain false. The UAE just granted visa-free access to Indian nationals.
I would check the information you are relying on if this is the kind of assumptions you are making.
> And this notion of separation into "undesirables" in Gulf countries is also just plain false. The UAE just granted visa-free access to Indian nationals.
This isn’t exactly a convincing argument for the claim here, which to be fair I also wouldn’t phrase in that way, but it is telling that the citizenship/naturalization laws are deeply separate for foreign workers as opposed to locals in many Gulf countries.
No alcohol on any connecting flight for certain airlines (Saudia, Turkish), or just no alcohol while in Saudi airspace for other airlines (BA). KSA is a big desert country, with a big dry airspace.
some LCC ban drinking anything alcoholic aboard that was not bough aboard so 'clever' morons buy soda and vodka and the airport and spike the soda in the bathroom... kinda pathetic what addiction does to some...
The point is not (dis)approval for the activity, it's the effect on ticket sales at the margin.
If a tourist intends to sleep all the way to Thailand, it might not make much difference, and they may chose the lowest price. If a banker if flying business class London to Singapore, they will fly Emirates via Dubai instead.
I recently visited King Abdullah Economic City (KAEC, [1]) in Saudi Arabia. It was intended to have a population of 2 million, but according to the Financial Times only had a population of 7000 in 2018. It was like a ghost town when I visited, so I don't think it has increased much since then.
With so many promises being made about "Vision 2030", I worry that the amount of discontent that results when it turns out to be a disappointment might lead to instability
Development in the oil rich countries of the Middle East is strange. Everything is planned and designed by Americans/Europeans and built by South Asians/poorer Arabs. They don’t really build any skill or capabilities in their local population say, for example, like India.
Sure, just like the 16 other Saudi megaprojects that will all totally get built and attract hundreds of millions of tourists overnight as their PR firms are telling us.
This is the point. I k ow plenty of travelling women and families who will take other routes because the area is associated with such a poor view (read: personal risk or inconvenience) for women.
I'm not US based and on our way to Europe there are a couple of options for transit hubs.
I know plenty of people who go from Asia to Europe via the Middle East because the other route via the US involves getting a US visa and doing the full trip though immigration, customers and usually security.
It would take us a great deal longer to go via the US from our western pacific location. There are quite a few options from Asia to Europe which do not go through the middle east.
Other middle eastern airlines (Emirates, Qatar, Etihad, Turkish) have all the same advantages and a decades-long head start on Saudi. Simply building a fancy airport isn't all that it takes to compete in what is already a cut throat industry.
I always wonder if having unlimited money is all it takes. There's only so many excavators in the world, and hiring every single one would probably tank someone's economy
It won't be. Dubai Int'l and Istanbul were both also built by their governments to be the largest in the world and are already open. Per wikipedia neither has come anywhere close to ATL so far -- 66 and 64 million as compared to 93.7 million passengers in 2022 -- although much closer than most normal airports of course.
For n cities, there are n^2 possible connections. Most of these will see hardly any traffic, so a direct flight would only happen once a week or so. With hub-and-spoke, everyone coming from Small City A will fly on the same quite-frequent flight to Atlanta, regardless of their intended destination. In Atlanta they'll all transfer to their own flights, going back to the individual smaller cities.
It’s not a small city, but the volume of traffic the airport has to handle is because it’s a transfer hub. Atlanta is a 2hr flight from 80% of the US population (not geographically).
It probably has to serve a much larger burst passenger capacity than Atlanta given that it like most Saudi mega projects needs to serve the ever increasing needs of the annual Hadj. However the other 11 months of the year will look like a podunk regional airport.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Al_Maktoum_International_Airpo...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hamad_International_Airport
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bahrain_International_Airport#...
UAE now has old Dubai airport (DXB), new Dubai airport (DWC) and Abu Dhabi (AUH) all within 130 km (80 miles) of each other.
KSA has Dubai Envy - it always aims to do what Dubai is doing now, but with about a 20-year time lag, and it often fails. For example, the Riyadh Financial District (KAFD) is largely empty, except for companies forced to go there by threats from the government.