City Riyadh Financial News

Delta Air Lines has struck a deal with a start-up airline to operate flights between the United States and Saudi Arabia

Akasa Air spreads its wings on domestic and international routes, the less-than-two-year-old airline's chief Vinay Dube has said he does not think about competition in encouraging or discouraging terms, as the aviation market is «big enough for us to succeed». The carrier, which took to the skies in August 2022, currently has a fleet of 24 Boeing 737 MAX planes and operates more than 900 flights weekly.

UFC fight night is taking place in Saudi Arabia on Saturday as part of UFC International Fight Week. The main event features Ikram Aliskerov and former UFC middleweight champion Robert Whittaker, as per a report on CBSSports. UFC fight night in Saudi Arabia is taking place on June 22 at Kingdom Arena, Riyadh. The main card will kick start at 3 pm (ET). The event will be live telecast on ESPN+ in the US.

Akasa Air, India’s youngest airline, is on an expansion spree. The airline has commenced operations to Riyadh, the capital of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. Now, Akasa will operate daily flight operations between Mumbai and Ridyadh, the airline said in a statement. As per the company, the inaugural flight on June 15, 2024 departed from Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj International Airport in Mumbai. 

Air India chief executive officer and managing director Campbell Wilsonsaid at the CAPA India aviation summit. Sensing an opportunity, several foreign airlines have firmed up plans to approach the government with their requests. “Today we have not exhausted the bilaterals, in terms of number of seats per week but we have hit the limit in terms of number of stations," Sanjiv Kapoor, executive vice-president, strategies of the Saudia Group told Mint.

Saudi Aramco’s generous dividends can only go so far in making up for an overpriced initial public offering. The Saudi Arabian national oil company will sell shares worth up to $12 billion in an offering this week. The Saudi government, which will still own more than 80% of Aramco at the end of the sale, will use the proceeds to fund the country’s cash-hungry Vision 2030 initiatives.

OPEC+ extended its production cuts as it seeks to bolster a fragile market, but also set a date to begin bringing some oil back online later this year.

UFC event every weekends. However, there will be no fight night on this Saturday, May 25. One week of no action paves the way for the big event — UFC 302 which will witness Islam Makhachev taking on Dustin Poirier for Lightweight title in Newark on June 1.

Saudi Arabia signed deals to buy electricity from two large-scale wind farms that are cheaper than natural gas plants, as it aims to rapidly transition to a bigger share of renewables in the power grid. The state-run Saudi Power Procurement Co. this week said it had agreed to purchase power at record-low prices from the wind projects to be developed in the kingdom by Japan’s Marubeni Corp. A combination of state backing and strong wind conditions in the country will help make the green power plants cheaper than fossil fuel alternatives, the head of the Saudi company said. “What’s unique about these projects is they’ve achieved extremely low cost of electricity that is considered the lowest we’ve seen globally,” Mazin Albahkali, chief executive officer of SPPC, said in an interview. “Achieving extremely low tariffs on renewables is definitely helping reduce the cost of power generation in Saudi Arabia.”

Oil prices ticked up early on Tuesday after Israel struck Rafah in Gaza while negotiations for a ceasefire with Hamas continued without resolution. Brent crude futures were up 46 cents, or 0.55%, at $83.79 per barrel at 0010 GMT, while U.S. West Texas Intermediate (WTI) crude futures rose 46 cents, or 0.59%, to $78.94 a barrel.

Saudi Arabia posted a budget deficit Saudi Arabia posts budget deficit of $3.30 billion in first quarter of Saudi Arabia posts budget deficit of $3.30 billion in first quarter of 12.387 billion riyals ($3.30 billion) in the first quarter of 2024, the finance ministry said on Sunday, after lower oil revenues and increased spending weighed on the economy. The kingdom needs to spend hundreds of billions of dollars to fund giga-projects aimed at weaning the economy off oil and to boost tourism and the private sector.

Pakistan’s plans for a central bank digital currency (CBDC) gained fresh momentum on Sunday, with finance minister Muhammad Aurangzeb raising the debate again.

Saudi Arabia on April 29 to meet with regional partners. Blinken, on his two-day visit to Saudi Arabia, will discuss ongoing efforts to achieve a ceasefire in Gaza that secures the release of hostages and «how it is Hamas that is standing between the Palestinian people and a ceasefire,» the US State Department said in a release.

₹6.46 crore, PTI reported while citing an official. Customs officials arrested eight passengers who had over 6.815 kg of gold worth ₹4.44 crore and diamonds valued at ₹2.02 crore last weekend, according to a statement released late April 22 night. An Indian traveller going from Mumbai to Bangkok was caught with diamonds hidden in noodle packets inside his suitcase.

National Testing Agency (NTA) declaring the CUET PG Result 2024 today, April 13, the agency has released a list of toppers as well. Candidates who have appeared for the Common University Entrance Test (Postgraduate) 2024 can check and download the CUET PG 2024 Result from the official website at pgcuet.samarth.ac.in. The NTA conducted the CUET PG 2024 between March 11 and 28, 2024 via a computer-based test (CBT) in 572 different centres located in 262 cities including nine cities outside India (Manama, Dubai, Kathmandu, Muscat, Riyadh, Ottawa, Abu Dhabi, Vienna, and Qatar) How to check CUET PG Result 2024:

Akasa Air has commenced its international operations with its inaugural overseas flight departing from Mumbai to Doha, Qatar. In a statement on Thursday, the airline said it has been granted traffic rights for three other international destinations — Kuwait, Jeddah, and Riyadh. Akasa will be rapidly expanding its global footprint in the coming months, the statement said. Further, the airline said with its conveniently timed flight schedule, travellers from other domestic cities such as Ahmedabad, Goa, Varanasi, Lucknow, Bengaluru, Kochi, and Delhi will also have multiple connecting options for travel to and from Doha via Mumbai.

Bellator 302 is all set to be held in Northern Ireland on Friday night. Bellator MMA's return to Belfast is significant as it will be first since Bellator 173 in February 2017. Corey Anderson will fight Karl Moore for light heavyweight championship. Fabian Edwards will take on Aaron Jeffery in middleweights category. Jeremy Kennedy will fight Patricio Pitbull in featherweight championship. James Gallagher will fight Leandro Higo in featherweights category. Manouel Sousa versus Tim Wilde fight will take place for lightweights category.

Vinay Dube, Founder, MD & CEO, Akasa Air, says: “We are part of India's growth story. We can help underpin the economic growth as is required with strong transportation links. We are India's most on-time airline and so we have a real sort of approach to service excellence that we hope is not seen so far. For me, it is just excitement in the future and to top it all off, we are starting our first international flight and so we get to plant the orange Akasa flag in Doha, Qatar just in a few days and we have broken all records with it. We are the first airline to fly internationally within 19 months of launch when most others have taken about six years and that is the reason why I am so excited.” Dube further said: «Flight to Kuwait, Riyadh, Jeddah will come on the heels of Doha, perhaps later this summer. I cannot give you a definitive timeline because we are working with these foreign governments to get the appropriate approvals before we can launch it. But that is just the start. We will (eventually) fly to other parts of the Indian subcontinent, whether it is Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, Kathmandu, etc, or Southeast Asia, other parts of the Middle East.» What is happening in the Indian skies right now? There is competition. There is a news flow, a lot of issues we keep hearing about with regards to Boeing. We are going to address that in greater detail, but set the roadmap for us. Vinay Dube: For me, Indian aviation is growth, excitement and a future of connected cities.

Akasa Air is confident that deliveries of its ordered Boeing 737 MAX jets will be on time, its CEO said, despite concerns over the U.S. planemaker's production schedule for 737s amid intense scrutiny after a mid-air incident this year. India's newest airline in January announced an order for 150 Boeing 737s, as it bets big on its international operations. The order announcement came days after a mid-air cabin panel blowout on an Alaska Air flight. Though Akasa's order does not include the 737 Max 9 version which has been in the spotlight after the incident, broader internal company scrutiny and external investigations in the U.S. have raised worries that delivery timeline of other variants of Boeing's 737 jetliner programme could be hit.

Saudi Arabia is considering transferring ownership of national carrier Saudia to the sovereign wealth fund, the Public Investment Fund, two sources familiar with the matter said. The transfer would include other assets owned by Saudia, one of the Middle East's oldest airlines, including its low cost unit, Flyadeal, the sources said.

Saudi Arabia’s crown prince has transferred another 8% of shares in the kingdom’s oil giant Saudi Aramco to the country’s prominent sovereign wealth fund