RIYADH: Saudi Arabia will soon assess the feasibility of establishing low-cost airports around Riyadh following a call from the Kingdom’s Shoura Council. The country’s Consultative Assembly urged the General Authority of Civil Aviation to build and operate the planned airports or offer them to the private sector in a build-operate-transfer manner, according to a post on X. Additionally, the council recommended that GACA collaborate with national carriers to increase domestic flights and diversify their destinations to enhance transportation and tourism services. These initiatives align with the Kingdom’s aviation sector goals, such as increasing passenger numbers and expanding flight routes. They also support GACA’s vision of enabling Saudi leadership in aviation through customer-centric and digitally-enabled regulatory services. The council also emphasized the need for GACA to activate the annual target for air freight in accordance with the National Transport and Logistics Strategy. Earlier this week, Riyadh-based King Khalid International Airport was recognized as one of the top three performing terminals in the Kingdom, according to official data. In its monthly report for April, GACA indicated that the airport led the category for international terminals with over 15 million passengers annually, achieving an 82 percent compliance rate with the authority’s standards. The evaluation, based on 11 key criteria, aims to improve service quality and enhance the passenger experience. Earlier in May, in an interview with Arab News on the sidelines of the Future Aviation Forum held in Riyadh, Vice President of GACA for Quality and Traveler Experience, Abdulaziz Al-Dahmash, said the Kingdom has set “very ambitious targets” in this sector. He noted that these targets include tripling the number of passengers compared to 2019, handling 4.5 million tonnes of cargo, and establishing more than 250 direct destinations from the Kingdom’s airports to global locations. “Those key targets need enablers, and one of the key pillars is our passenger experience, and we always say that the passenger comes first, so from that perspective, we started different programs from a regulator perspective,” Al-Dahmash told Arab News at the time.