Reframing Aviation's Defining Challenge
Sustainability has become one of the defining issues facing aviation today. Aviation continues to enable global connectivity, economic growth, and social exchange, and demand for air travel is accelerating. In Saudi Arabia, this momentum is clearly visible. The Kingdom welcomed an estimated 122 million visitors in 2025, marking meaningful progress toward Saudi Vision 2030's target of 150 million annual visitors.
Yet aviation is also a hard-to-abate sector. Today, aviation accounts for approximately 2.5 percent of human-made global CO₂ emissions, and emissions cannot be eliminated through incremental improvements alone. What makes this moment different is that growth, regulatory pressure, financial scrutiny, and public expectations are now converging at the same time. Sustainability is no longer discussed in the future tense. It has become an operational, financial, and governance reality.
Success for Saudia Group will not be defined by speed or announcements, but by resilience, credibility, and consistency. As we expand our network and fleet, sustainability must remain embedded in how we plan, invest, and operate. Saudi Arabia's ambition to achieve net-zero emissions by 2060 reinforces the need to align growth, sustainability, and national priorities in a way that is grounded in operational reality.
A System-Level Approach to Sustainable Aviation
Saudia Group is the Kingdom's national aviation group, and we operate aviation as an integrated system, not simply as an airline. Alongside guest travel, we operate cargo and the critical services that enable connectivity behind the scenes, including maintenance, training, logistics, catering, and ground operations.
This perspective also allows sustainability to be embedded across the aviation value chain rather than treated as a standalone initiative. In 2025, sustainability interventions across our aviation system enabled the reduction and management of approximately 632,000 tons of CO₂ emissions. These outcomes were achieved through concrete actions across flight operations, inflight services, cargo and supply chains, and ground operations, including efficiency improvements, weight reduction, logistics optimization, local sourcing, and reductions in single-use materials.
From Ambition to Execution
At Saudia Group, sustainability is approached as a long-term strategy, not a compliance exercise and not a collection of disconnected initiatives. Our strategy is aligned with Saudi Vision 2030, ESG principles, the UN Sustainable Development Goals, and global reporting frameworks, ensuring consistency and credibility.
The strategy is anchored in four pillars: Climate and Resources; Our People and Community; Circular Economy and Economic Growth; and Governance and Transparency. These pillars are operationalized through our clear strategic framework and embedded across Group companies, ensuring sustainability is integrated into planning, investment, and daily decision-making.
Decarbonizing aviation cannot be achieved by airlines acting alone. It requires coordinated policy, infrastructure, technology, and partnerships. We are translating this collaboration into execution. A clear example is our partnership with Red Sea Global at Red Sea International Airport, where Saudia operated the first domestic SAF-powered flight in the Kingdom.
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