May 27, 2011

Fly-In Fly-Out

Riyadh's King Khalid International Airport offers surprisingly large number of connections not only to all regional destinations in the Middle East but also to all major air transportation hubs in Europe, Asia and USA. That said, there are two things that continuously puzzle me (T):

First, when flying to/from Europe, almost all flights depart/arrive middle of the night. And with "middle of the night" I really mean "middle of the night". E.g. Turkish Airlines flight from Istanbul arrives around 1am and leaves around 2am. Rare exception is British Airways daily flight to London that departs 8am in the morning. Yes, it might be that airlines just want to ensure as good onward connections as possible for their customers but there is probably something else behind this, too.

Second, with the exception of Dubai there barely is any regional destination that you could easily fly-in in the morning and fly-out in the evening - something which is a standard business procedure everywhere in Europe. Either you leave middle of the night (see above) and arrive to your destination around 3am or 4am (with at least 4-5 hours waiting before any morning meetings commence) or you can leave middle of the day (not very effective use of your time) and spend the night in a hotel (extra costs). Maybe it is so that whenever somebody has a chance to travel out from the Magic Kingdom, they want to spend at least one night in their destination.


Sunrise as seen from King Khalid International Airport.

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