Universal Aviation Opens Saudi Arabia's First Dedicated General Aviation Terminal and FBO at Dammam

Universal Aviation, an Evans Family Company, has begun live operations at the new General Aviation Terminal (GAT) and FBO at King Fahd International Airport in Dammam (OEDF), marking the first dedicated general aviation terminal and FBO in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. The 42,000 ft² facility was developed in close partnership with MATARAT Holding and Dammam Airports Company (DACO), with Universal Aviation serving as the appointed manager and operator providing full-service ground handling. The company has already handled its first flight through the new terminal.

The facility includes two dedicated VIP lounges, a pilot's lounge, a conference room, a food and beverage refreshment area, offices, showers, and onsite customs, immigration, and quarantine facilities. It also features an approximately 20,000 ft² dedicated private aviation hangar, described as the first state-sponsored general aviation hangar in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, offering enclosed, climate-protected storage for aircraft operating in the Eastern Province.

Universal Aviation was awarded the concession to manage the Dammam GAT in late 2025. The facility was formally inaugurated in February 2026, after which the company completed staffing, training, equipment deployment, and regulatory certification, including GACAR Part 151 certification issued by the General Authority of Civil Aviation (GACA). "Bringing the new Dammam GAT to operational readiness required a tremendous amount of coordination across facility development, staffing, training, equipment, safety systems, regulatory approvals, and operating procedures," said John Hewett, Global Vice President, Universal Aviation.

Dammam is the first of three planned Universal Aviation flagship locations in Saudi Arabia. Additional operations are expected to open later this year at King Abdulaziz International Airport in Jeddah (OEJN), where Universal Aviation will manage an approximately 108,000 ft² private aviation hangar, and at King Khalid International Airport in Riyadh (OERK), where the company will operate a Universal Aviation-exclusive private aviation lounge and full-service ground handling. To support the three-location network, Universal Aviation has established a centralized Operational Control Center staffed by professional English-speaking operations specialists to handle pre-arrival planning, coordination, and multi-city itineraries across Saudi Arabia.

"Today's opening is an important milestone, but it is only the beginning of our long-term vision for Saudi Arabia," said Greg Evans, Managing Principal, Evans Family Office, parent of Universal Aviation. "We are committed to investing in the Kingdom, developing Saudi talent, and helping elevate business aviation service standards."

Universal Aviation operates a global network of more than 75 locations across more than 20 countries and has over 65 years of operational experience. The Dammam opening represents the company's first operational location in Saudi Arabia.

A single-operator concession covering an entire national general aviation network is unusual in business aviation, where FBO ownership is typically fragmented across airports and operators. Dammam gives Universal Aviation a template it intends to repeat at Jeddah and Riyadh, each with a different asset mix — a large hangar in one city, an exclusive lounge and ground handling in the other — under one centralized operations desk rather than three independent stations.

That structure matters for how charter and fractional operators plan trips into Saudi Arabia: a single Operational Control Center handling pre-arrival planning and multi-city itineraries reduces the coordination burden that normally falls on individual flight departments when crossing between airports with separate handlers. Whether that consolidation actually lowers turnaround times and slot friction will depend on how the Jeddah and Riyadh sites perform once open.

The next dated checkpoints are the Jeddah and Riyadh openings expected later this year, including whether the roughly 108,000 ft² Jeddah hangar and the Riyadh lounge come online on the timeline Universal Aviation has set out, and whether GACA certification for those sites proceeds as smoothly as the Part 151 process did in Dammam.