Boeing shows its mettle...

The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia will be the aviation market to watch over the next decade. A new national airline, expanding existing carriers, a host of new airports and a new national maintenance repair and overhaul (MRO) ‘farm’ are all parts of a jigsaw that will create a complete aviation eco-system.

The reason for this huge spurt in growth is Vision 2030, Saudi Arabia’s vast national initiative to diversify its economy away from the oil and gas sector. Having seen from neighbouring Dubai how aviation can be a driving force behind an economy, Saudi Arabia aims to surpass their achievement.

Vision 2030 brings huge potential opportunities for aviation companies. But, in return for access to government contracts, Saudi Arabia is demanding that multi-national companies set up regional headquarters within the country if they wish to be considered for these deals.

All such companies must have a certain mass of executives who are able to take decisions on deals. In Boeing’s case it now has more than 100 personnel in Saudi Arabia directing the company’s strategic direction in the country.

Boeing Saudi Arabia is now a distinct entity from its wider Middle East operation. Heading up the new organisation is Asaad Al Jomoai. It’s the second stint at Boeing for Al Jomoai, who until 2021 was the company’s in-country lead for international strategic partnerships, responsible for developing Boeing defence localisation opportunities, business growth and localisation obligation fulfilment. He also held the position of VP strategy and business development, Boeing Saudi Arabia.

“When I left in 2021, it was kind of a career change, to actively contribute to Vision 2030,” Al Jomoai said. “I was offered a job by the minister of investment as a senior advisor, directly working for him.”

His role was as managing director of the country’s Global Supply Chain Resilience Initiative (GSCRI), inaugurated under the auspices of the Crown Prince, Mohammed bin Salman Al-Saud and which aimed to establish Saudi Arabia as a major supply chain hub.

This, says Al Jomoai, is a role to which the country is well-suited, when one considers its strategic location, skilled workforce and financial situation.

However, in 2023, he was approached by the then-president of Boeing Saudi Arabia, who was retiring and asked Al Jomoai for his permission to put his name forward in the company’s succession plan. He duly returned.

As part of the wide-ranging plan to transform Saudi Arabia into a centre for aviation, Boeing is part of a plan to start production of two of the materials most used in aircraft construction, aviation-grade aluminium and titanium.

The company has several industrial partnerships with local companies and the plans to produce the two metals were the most recent and most exciting of these.

Al Jomoai has signed an MoU with the country’s ministry of investment. In aluminium, Boeing is technical partner in an over-arching deal that will allow a Public Investment Fund (PIF)-managed company, Ma’aden, to produce the metal. “Boeing is helping create the entity that will eventually become the manufacturer of the material.

“We hope to reach an agreement between PIF, Boeing and two ministries by the end of the year.”

Boeing may be one of the companies to which Ma’aden supplies aluminium, although this is not yet confirmed.

Meanwhile, another MoU signed last year aims at exploring the potential investment and development collaboration opportunities between Saudi holding company Tasnee and Boeing to advance the aviation-grade titanium alloy value chain in the kingdom.

In a joint venture with Japanese company Toho, Saudi Arabia already produces titanium sponge. The aim is to make greater use of the material by melting and forging it into products that can be used in aircraft.

Boeing, of course, has a long relationship with Saudi Arabian Airlines (Saudia) and now has a new one with the country’s new flag-carrier Riyadh Air. The two airlines last year ordered a total of 121 Boeing 787s (78 firm and 43 options) between them.

Since then, however, Saudia and its low-cost subsidiary Flyadeal have announced orders for 105 Airbus A320neo-family narrowbodies, an indication of the intense competition between the two OEMs.

At the time of writing, a long-awaited substantial order from Riyadh Air for narrowbodies had still not been announced and Boeing was in negotiations with Saudia for a substantial batch of freighters – again, in competition with Airbus.

Saudia has indicated to the contenders that it is anxious to conclude a deal for cargo aircraft – the choice is likely to be between the Boeing 777F and the Airbus A350F – to stake a claim to a portion of the rapidly-growing e-commerce market.

Since the pandemic, “E-commerce has gone through the roof,” Al Jomoai noted. “[Saudia] know that their mandate is that by 2030 they want to be able to reach 4.5 million tonnes of cargo, either transiting through Saudi Arabia as a hub, or issued from Saudi Arabia.”

Getting into the booming e-commerce market is the business driver that the airline repeatedly mentions, with an emphasis on swift deliveries of dedicated cargo aircraft to minimise what the airline feels is a growing loss of business opportunity.

On the military side, Boeing is keen to sell its latest version of the F-15 Eagle fighter, the F-15EX, to Saudi Arabia. This would join the substantial fleets of earlier variants – the F-15S and SA – in the service’s inventory.

“We’re actively engaged with the Saudi government to explore the sale of the F-15EX,” Al Jomoai said, while accepting that Boeing faces tough competition from the Eurofighter Typhoon (which is already in RSAF service and the Dassault Rafale (which has been bought by the UAE and Qatar).

If Saudi Arabia does opt for the F-15EX, Boeing would also be keen to sell the country its new-generation T-7 trainer, being co-developed with Saab, as the preferred lead-in trainer to the heavy fighter. Boeing is also looking closely at possible Saudi interest in the KC-46 Pegasus tanker and the CH-47 Chinook medium-lift helicopter.

However, one of the most far-reaching – and startling – ideas being mulled by Boeing’s Saudi operation is the possible restarting of production of the C-17 strategic airlifter.

Production of the immensely capable – but fearsomely expensive – C-17 ended at Boeing’s Long Beach, California, plant in 2015, after 279 had been built, 223 of them for the US Air Force.  The aircraft was exported to several nations, but not Saudi Arabia.

Now, however, discussions are ongoing over the possibility of restarting production of the C-17 in the kingdom.

While many hurdles would have to be overcome before any such resumption of production could take place, Al Jomoai said that the idea was not just a pipedream.

Even if the idea is practicable, the costs involved in recreating an assembly line, re-establishing a supply chain and recreating the necessary skills in a production force would be immense. But if any country has the resources to do it, it is Saudi Arabia.

The project could take the form of “co-development, co-production of some capability, whether the C-17 itself or something similar.” He has asked Boeing to look at the cost of resurrecting a production line and then proposing that to the Saudi government “as a co-investor or even a full investor”.

No western nation has produced a successor aircraft in the C-17’s class and Boeing has said in the past that it still receives enquiries from nations about restarting production. In the Gulf, the UAE operates a fleet of eight, while Kuwait and Qatar have two each.

A major prize would be an order from the Royal Saudi Air Force (RSAF), whose largest transport aircraft at present is the Lockheed Martin C-130, whose payload, at 19 tonnes, is around 25 per cent of the C-17’s 74 tonnes. The RSAF has a large fleet of 33 increasingly elderly C-130Hs, which will have to be supplemented or replaced in the not-too-distant future.

“We’re in the midst of this process, looking at how much it would cost,” Al Jomoai said. “That, I assure you, is no joke.”