Huh: Beond Airlines Expanding To 18 New Cities By 2026, Or Something

Beond Airlines launched operations in 2023, and it brands itself as the world’s first premium leisure airline. The company is headquartered in Dubai, but primarily operates flights to and from the Maldives. I reviewed the airline last year, and the onboard experience was super pleasant (it was a surreal experience, given how empty the flight was).

The airline has just announced plans to expand massively, and grow its network from five destinations to 22 destinations. However, the details are a bit murky, and the timeline raises some eyebrows.

Beond announces massive expansion plans

Before Beond launched, the people behind the company claimed that the airline would serve 60 destinations within five years, with 32 aircraft. That seemed wildly optimistic to me. When the airline finally launched operations, it struggled with reliability, and often canceled flights last minute because they were empty. Fortunately this seems to have improved in recent times.

As things currently stand, Beond’s destinations out of Male include Dubai, Milan, Munich, Riyadh, and Zurich. The Dubai and Riyadh flights are nonstop, while the other flights operate with a refueling stop in the Middle East.

Beond has now announced plans to add service to 18 new destinations, with the flights expected to launch “through 2025 and into 2026.” So, where does the airline plan to expand to?

• In Europe, Beond intends to fly to Dusseldorf, Paris, Rome, Vienna, and Warsaw
• In the Far East, Beond intends to fly to Bangkok, Beijing, Guangzhou, Seoul, and Shanghai
• In India, Beond intends to fly to Bangalore, Delhi, Hyderabad, and Mumbai
• In the Middle East, Beond intends to fly to Abu Dhabi, Bahrain, Jeddah, and Kuwait

Here’s how Beond CEO Tero Taskila describes this development:

“Our vision is to make the Maldives more accessible to premium travellers from around the world while offering an experience that reflects true luxury—personal, thoughtful, and inspiring. Global competition for customers seeking luxury leisure travel experiences is strong and customers have choice. The Maldives is well-suited to capture this demand, and more so with the connectivity beOnd brings to the market.”

The only thing we’re missing are the details

What’s strange here is that Beond is announcing a massive number of new destinations, but isn’t revealing any actual details about launch dates, schedules, etc. We’re already four months into 2025, so you’d expect that 2025 flights would go on sale imminently.

For that matter, Beond’s fleet currently consists of two jets — one 44-seat A319, and one 68-seat A321. You’d think that if you’re going to add 18 new destinations, you’d need at least a handful of additional jets (and that assumes each route is only served a couple of times per week). That’s a lot of planes to take delivery of very quickly, especially since the airline presumably doesn’t have unlimited funds to work with.

It’ll be really interesting to see how this plays out. I’m rooting for Beond, as the airline offers a nice passenger experience, even if I don’t think the current business model makes much sense.

But this is also a strange announcement — borderline unbelievable — claiming that 18 new destinations will be added in the next 20 months (and even naming them specifically), with no further details. The announcement almost seems like it’s intended to get interest from investors, more than anything else.

Bottom line

Beond Airlines reportedly plans to add 18 new destinations from the Maldives by 2026, expanding from the current five destinations. However, there are no details on when exactly the routes will launch, or about Beond’s plans to grow its fleet to enable that growth. So we’ll mark this as “developing” for now…

What do you make of Beond’s alleged expansion plans?