RIYADH: With Saudi airfares skyrocketing on some domestic routes, the aviation authority has stepped in to calm angry travelers with a set of measures including reviewing the pricing structure and current capacity.  

The General Authority of Civil Aviation said it has recently noticed a change in the prices of some categories of tickets. This has prompted the authority to take a slew of direct measures that will lead to a review of the pricing structure of domestic air transport and an increase in seats capacity and number of flights.

This comes following an angry campaign on social media where many Saudi travelers vented out their frustration of paying as high as SR1500 ($400) for some destinations within the country. 

The GACA said these steps are aimed at ensuring the provision of suitable prices for passengers and enhancing competitiveness in the air transport sector. It insisted that the rights and protection of passengers are a top priority for the authority to which it is committed.

Hashim Almanashi, a passenger affected by the matter, told Arab News: “Ticket prices had increased by nearly 300 percent, this is honestly an unexplainable increase.” 

Almansshi has a family of six members living in Eastern Provence of the Kingdom, and it will require him a “major budget” to book tickets for each member with these rates, he said.

He is now delighted by the response of GACA, noting that prices have already decreased by nearly 40 percent after the announcement.

“I checked the rates before and after and found a significant decrease in ticket prices after the announcement, it was SR1500, and now it is in the range of SR900,” he said.