A month before Riyadh Air carried its first commercial passengers, YouGov started tracking how people in Saudi Arabia felt about the Kingdom’s newest airline.
At the time, Riyadh Air was still more promise than product: a distinctive livery, an ambitious proposition and a major pre-launch campaign but no passengers and no operating history.
Twelve months on, the data reveals a fascinating shift in how consumers perceive a brand moving from anticipation to reality.
From anticipation to reality
Riyadh Air entered the market on a wave of anticipation. In September 2025, a month before its first commercial flight, Consideration stood at 21.6. Within a month of taking to the skies, it had fallen to 15.9, while overall Index dropped from 18.5 pre-launch to 16.7–16.9 over the following three months.
The pattern captures a familiar challenge for a new brand: anticipation is easy to build; delivering on the promise is harder.
Before launch, Riyadh Air could largely be judged on its ambition and marketing. Once flights began, consumers had something tangible to assess — the product, the service and the experience.
The early dip therefore marks an important transition: the point at which Riyadh Air’s brand promise met the reality of being an airline.
The recovery
From around month five, Riyadh Air’s brand health began to turn upwards. Buzz reached 26.1 in month eight, followed by improvements in Quality and overall Index.
Twelve months on, Riyadh Air’s BrandIndex Index score stands at 24.0, up 5.5 points from the month before launch and 7.3 points from its post-launch low. Quality is up 5.8 points and Buzz 6.1 points versus pre-launch.
All three measures are now at their highest observed levels since tracking began.
The final period is partial, with data running to 19 September 2026, so these should be treated as the highest observed scores to date rather than statistically confirmed peaks.
The trajectory suggests that Riyadh Air has moved beyond the initial curiosity surrounding its arrival and is beginning to establish more durable perceptions around the brand.
A new airline, an uneven effect on the market
Riyadh Air did not enter an empty market. We tracked it alongside Saudia, flynas and flyadeal to understand how perceptions across the category moved as the new carrier arrived.
Saudia remained broadly resilient, with its overall brand health largely unchanged over the period. flynas experienced the clearest decline in Quality following Riyadh Air’s arrival, although it subsequently recovered some ground. Meanwhile, flyadeal ended the period at its highest Index score recorded during the tracking period, following an initial dip.
The data shows that the arrival of a major new carrier has coincided with a more fluid competitive landscape, while Riyadh Air itself has steadily strengthened.
Who is driving Riyadh Air’s recovery?
The aggregate picture also conceals important differences between audiences.
Higher-income consumers: those earning $4,000+ per month, are consistently among Riyadh Air’s strongest segments and have pulled further ahead in the latest period. That is particularly relevant for an airline positioning itself as a premium carrier.
There is also a notable age pattern. 18–24 and 45+ consumers show the strongest recent gains in Index, while 25–34s, who led on Consideration before launch, have shown the slowest recovery on that measure.
By nationality, Saudi nationals are anchoring the recovery, while Consideration among Arab expats remains below its pre-launch level.
The result is a brand whose recovery is not happening uniformly across the population. Some audiences are moving faster than others, providing a more nuanced picture than the overall Index alone suggests.
What the first year tells us
Riyadh Air's first year offers a useful distinction between launching a brand and building one. The airline began with strong anticipation, dipped once that anticipation met real-world experience, and has since rebuilt perceptions across key measures of brand health.
The wider market moved differently around it: Saudia remained broadly stable, flynas has yet to fully recover its pre-launch Quality score, and flyadeal ended the period at its highest Index yet. Looking only at the launch period would have captured just one part of that story and missed how unevenly the effects rippled across competitors.
That's the broader lesson here: brand perception is rarely fixed at launch. For a new entrant, the launch is not the measurement point — it's the starting point. It takes sustained tracking to tell a temporary reaction apart from a lasting shift, and to see which audiences are moving with a brand and which are being left behind.
A year after take-off, Riyadh Air is not simply a new airline consumers have heard of. Its brand perceptions are now at their strongest observed levels since tracking began.
Know more about YouGov BrandIndex here.
Source: YouGov BrandIndex. Monthly volume-weighted averages, 26 September 2025–19 September 2026. Riyadh Air’s first commercial passenger flight took place on 26 October 2025. The latest tracking period is partial.