State-owned Saudi Arabian Airlines took a step towards privatisation on Monday, the official SPA news agency reported. The oil-rich kingdom's cabinet agreed at its weekly meeting to allow the airline to convert some of its "strategic units" into companies owned and licensed to the flagship carrier before they are sold to private investors, SPA said without elaborating.
A royal decree ended the airline's decades-long monopoly on domestic flights in 2003. Air transport and airport services are among the vital fields the government has opened to the private sector as part of an ambitious privatisation drive.
In 2006 the government authorised business travel specialist National Air Services (NAS) to launch the kingdom's first private domestic airline. Saudi Arabian Airlines was established in 1945 and has a fleet of 137 aircraft, according to the airline's website.