90% of Saudi travelers prefer to travel by air

JEDDAH: Official government statistics showed that air transport is the most preferable means of transportation for the vast majority of Saudis.

The number of Saudi passengers in 2015 reached 91.2 million passengers, where 81.9 million, i.e. 90 percent of all passengers, used aviation as a means of transportation, according to statistics released by the Ministry of Transport and the General Civil Aviation Authority, the General Organization of Railways and the General Organization of Ports.

The large area of the Kingdom and the distance between cities, in addition to foreign tourism, make air transport the most popular means of transportation.

Recent statistics showed that road transport came in the second with 8.7 percent, with the number exceeding 8 million passengers, while maritime transport came last, reaching 1.3 percent of the total number of passengers of the different types of transportation during the year 2015.

Statistics on the transport of goods showed the opposite in travel options, where maritime transport recorded a significant superiority in the field of transporting goods by more than 97.5 percent with weights reaching 233 million tons, while road transport came in second by 2 percent and with weights of 4.8 million tons, and air transport came at last because of its high cost, at not more than 0.5 percent, and weights reaching 1.2 million tons.