The flight, carried by the Israeli airline Arkia, bound for the Seychelles, departed at dawn from Ben Gurion Airport, near Tel Aviv, and flew along the Saudi Red Sea coast, reducing travel time by 20 minutes.
Since the 2020 Abraham Agreement — brokered by the United States, with which Israel has normalized relations with the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain — Saudi Arabia has allowed Israeli airlines to use its airspace, provided your destination is one of those two countries.
But that mandate was extended last month when Saudi Arabia made the unprecedented decision to fully open its airspace to all Israeli civilian flights, regardless of their destination.
The announcement of this decision came during a recent trip to the Middle East by US President Joe Biden, who was mediating a rapprochement between Israel and Saudi Arabia, which do not have diplomatic relations.
Israel wants Saudi Arabia to agree to normalize bilateral relations and is looking forward to the decision to open the airspace as a first step, which Riyadh denies.
The possibility of overflying Saudi Arabia also allows Israeli airlines to significantly reduce the flight time of flights to Asia, although to shorten it even more, they have to pass through Oman, another country in the region with which Israel does not have diplomatic relations. .
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