Interview: Simon Stewart, Nas Air CEO

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Four years after Saudi Arabia liberalised its aviation sector, Simon Stewart, chief executive of the only surviving private carrier, Nas Air, remains optimistic about the “vast potential” for air transport in the kingdom. Ask him about the progress to date, however, and the former army pilot pulls no punches. “Saudi aviation is pretty much structured as it was in the old legacy days,” he admits, and he doesn’t expect things to change overnight.

Low-cost carrier Nas Air was created in 2007 along with another private airline, Sama, to end the domestic monopoly of flag carrier Saudi Arabian Airlines. It was hoped the new license-holders would mimic the success of Jazeera Airways, which grew rapidly after the Kuwaiti aviation sector was liberalised in 2005...

Flying into the unknown

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“An economist is an expert who will know tomorrow why the things he predicted yesterday didn’t happen,” wrote the late US educator Laurence Peter. His words ring as true today as ever before, with the world’s brightest economic minds showing little aptitude for diagnosing – let alone remedying – the perfect storm of a European debt crisis, a stagnating US economy, and political upheaval across the Arab world.

And yet while meaningful forecasts elude the experts, the simplest of litmus tests is available to anyone by looking up, towards the skies, at the air transport sector – the lifeblood of the global economy...