Sama announces the milestone of 400,000 bookings

Andrew Cowen, Chief Executive Officer of Sama said that these numbers demonstrated the popularity of Sama's low fares concept across all sectors of Saudi society, whether travelling to visit friends and family, on pilgrimage, or on business. Indeed, "we are seeing many of our flights departing completely full every day of the week, and this has supported our continued investment in our aircraft fleet, with a sixth aircraft entering our fleet in October."

In addition to offering low fares and a variety of simple ways to book seats between Dammam, Jeddah, Riyadh, Abha, Gizan, and Madinah, Sama is expanding its network with the addition of the cities of Hail, Ar'ar, Tabuk, Rafha, Al Qurayyat and Al Jawf, establishing Sama as a truly pan Saudi airline.

Mr. Cowen also said, "It is not enough to just offer low fares and a wide choice of destinations. We must also be an airline that passengers can rely upon to get them to their destination, on time. We are encouraged that to date most of our flights have left on time, and few of the remaining flights leaving within an hour of the scheduled departure time, except certain flight for external reasons that out of our control.

This is good punctuality for a new airline with a small number of aircraft, and means that we are performing better than almost all European airlines for which public data is available. Nonetheless, we are continuing to work hard to do better than this as we recognise and regret any occasion where our passengers have their journey disrupted. In most cases this occurs for reasons outside our control but we are working hard with our partners, GACA, the airports and our suppliers to ensure punctuality is at the forefront of our delivery."