Oman Airports Trials Driverless EVs, Targets Q3 2027

Oman just put a steering wheel-free vehicle through its paces on the tarmac of Salalah Airport, and the government liked what it saw enough to put a date on the calendar. The Ministry of Transport, Communications and Information Technology (MTCIT), working with Oman Airports, confirmed that an autonomous electric vehicle completed a real-world operational trial at the airport, with commercial autonomous vehicle operations now targeted to begin in the third quarter of 2027.

🔑 Key Takeaways

• MTCIT and Oman Airports trialled a driverless electric vehicle at Salalah Airport, with the Minister of Transport, Communications and Information Technology, Eng Said bin Hamoud Al Maawali, attending in person, according to Oman Observer.
• The trial tested sensing and real-time monitoring, route planning and navigation, and the vehicle's ability to respond safely to obstacles and changing conditions, as reported by Muscat Daily.
• The ministry is targeting the start of actual autonomous vehicle operations in Q3 2027, with the first phase focused on rapid delivery and last-mile logistics rather than passenger transport.
• The test took place around the Gulf Green Mobility Forum 2026 in Salalah, where officials also disclosed that green mobility projects in Oman drew roughly RO320 million in investment during 2025, part of a stated RO600 million commitment to the sector, per Muscat Daily.
• It is a separate initiative from Asyad Group's newly signed pact with Zelos Technology to pilot autonomous freight vehicles at Sohar Port and Salalah Free Zone, announced at the same forum and reported by Oman Observer.

🚗 What Actually Happened at Salalah Airport

According to Al Roya, MTCIT and Oman Airports ran the electric autonomous vehicle through a real operational environment rather than a closed lab, putting it through sensor checks, real-time monitoring, path-finding and obstacle response in actual airport conditions. Oman Observer's account of the same event notes that the goal was specifically to "enhance the efficiency of delivery operations, improve the speed and reliability of services, reduce operating costs and emissions" inside the airport environment.

Both outlets describe the outcome as successful, though neither publishes granular performance metrics such as distance covered, speed reached or number of test runs. What is clear is that this was framed as one step in a longer sequence: Muscat Daily reports that MTCIT plans "a series of additional technical and pilot phases" before any commercial rollout, meaning the Salalah test is a proof-of-concept milestone, not a finished product.

📅 The Road to Q3 2027

The ministry's own target, cited by both Muscat Daily and Oman Observer, is to begin actual autonomous vehicle operations in the third quarter of 2027. The first commercial use case will be narrow and practical: rapid delivery and last-mile logistics, the kind of short, repetitive, low-speed routes around an airport or industrial site that are widely seen as the easiest entry point for self-driving technology anywhere in the world, well ahead of open-road passenger use.

Abdullah bin Ali Al Busaidi, Director General of the Oman Logistics Centre and Net Zero Expert at MTCIT, told Muscat Daily that the transformation of the transport sector has become "an active development pathway" built on modern technology adoption, attracting quality investment, infrastructure development and a supportive regulatory environment, and argued that the shift to green mobility is as much an economic and investment opportunity as an environmental one.

🌱 Part of a Bigger Green Mobility Push in Salalah

The timing is not a coincidence. The trial results were disclosed around the Gulf Green Mobility Forum 2026, held in Salalah, where MTCIT also cited roughly RO320 million invested in green mobility projects in Oman during 2025 against a broader RO600 million sector commitment, according to Muscat Daily's coverage of the forum.

The same forum produced a second, distinct autonomous-vehicle story: Asyad Group, Oman's state logistics holding, signed an agreement with Zelos Technology to pilot autonomous freight vehicles at the Port of Sohar and Salalah Free Zone, alongside separate deals on green hydrogen refuelling and onshore power for vessels, as Oman Observer reported. That freight-truck pilot is a port and industrial-logistics play run by Asyad; the Salalah Airport trial is an airport-operations play run by MTCIT and Oman Airports. They share a forum, a green-mobility policy push and a Vision 2040 rationale, but they are different vehicles, different operators and different environments, and both are now moving in parallel rather than one superseding the other.

The push also sits alongside Oman's wider bet on homegrown technology capacity to support exactly this kind of infrastructure project, a theme echoed in the growth of Omani software firms such as Rihal, the Muscat SaaS startup that scaled to 300 staff after a $7.5 million raise, as the country tries to build both the infrastructure and the domestic talent base to operate it.

🇴🇲 Why This Matters for Oman

A single successful vehicle trial does not put driverless delivery carts on Muscat's streets tomorrow, and MTCIT itself has been careful to describe this as one phase among several still to come before Q3 2027. But it does two useful things for Oman's diversification story. First, it gives the Sultanate a dated, concrete milestone, rather than another open-ended ambition, to point to when it argues it is "an attractive environment for testing and deploying smart and sustainable transport technologies," in Oman Airports' own words as quoted by Oman Observer. Second, running this alongside Asyad's separate freight-vehicle pilot at Sohar and Salalah shows autonomous mobility moving from a single showcase project into multiple, sector-specific pilots (airports, ports, logistics) at the same time, which is a more credible signal of momentum than any one demonstration on its own. Whether Q3 2027 holds as a firm date, and how the "several additional technical and pilot phases" MTCIT has flagged actually play out, will be the real test of how fast Oman can turn a successful tarmac test into everyday infrastructure.