Middle East Business
Work starts on a Riyadh aviation training centre built for 700 people a day
By Staff Writer | 31 August 2026
More than SR200 million, 13,000 square metres in Al Rimal, three simulators in the first phase and structural provision for fourteen.
Construction has started on an aviation training centre in Riyadh for the Saudi carrier flynas, at an estimated investment of more than SR200 million. The building is scheduled to open in 2028 and is being developed with Airbus, CAE and Restart.
It covers about 13,000 square metres in the Al Rimal district, less than ten minutes from King Khalid International Airport, and is sized to put around 700 people a day through integrated training for pilots and cabin crew. The first phase carries three flight simulators. The building is designed to hold eight, and can be extended to fourteen.
The number that decides the building
Fourteen simulators is the figure a structural engineer reads first. A full flight simulator sits on a six-legged motion platform, moves under load and imposes a dynamic loading case that a conventional office floor slab does not answer. Designing a hall for eight and providing for fourteen means the frame, the bay spacing and the plant capacity are set now, at the start, for a demand that does not exist yet.
Three in phase one, provision for fourteen. The gap between those two numbers is what the client is paying for in the substructure, and it is the part of the scheme that cannot be added later.
Alongside the simulator hall the centre will carry facilities for practical safety and service training, which are wet drill and evacuation spaces rather than classrooms, and which bring their own drainage, water supply and ventilation loads.
Why the airline is building rather than buying
The stated case is control of the training pipeline. flynas says the centre will strengthen its in-house capability, improve efficiency and quality, reduce its reliance on external providers and lower its training costs, and that the project is expected to generate sustainable savings while supporting operational readiness and long-term expansion.
The training centre reaffirms flynas' commitment to investing in the development of national talent for specialized roles in the aviation sector, in parallel with our ambitious growth and expansion strategy.
Bander Almohanna, chief executive and managing director of flynas
A carrier that buys simulator hours competes for slots with every other operator of the same aircraft type, and pays a rate it does not set. A carrier that owns the hall recovers that cost against its own fleet growth and, once its own crews are trained, can sell the spare capacity. The 700 a day figure only makes sense on that second reading.
What is known, and what is not
The published figures are the investment, the area, the district, the daily capacity, the simulator counts and the 2028 opening. Two things are not on the public record.
The first is the contractor. Airbus, CAE and Restart are named as collaborators on the training centre, which is not the same statement as naming the builder, and no construction award has been announced. The second is the phasing between the building and the equipment. A simulator is a long-lead item with its own qualification programme, and the date a hall is handed over is rarely the date the first crew sits in it.
One figure carries a caveat worth stating. The investment was reported in riyals as more than SR200 million, and the dollar equivalents quoted elsewhere for the same project differ from one another, so the riyal figure is the one used here.
The next disclosure to look for is the main contract award, which will fix whether 2028 is a target or a programme.