Saudi Arabia opens airspace to Israel flights

SANAA, Nov. 10 (YPA) – An Israeli plane flew over the Saudi airspace of Mecca during its flight to India, the Hebrew daily Yediot Aharonot reported Monday.

This come in a tweet by Itay Blumental, aviation editor for Yediot Aharonot newspaper.

According to the Time of Israel , the Israel flight “was forced to make a detour into Saudi Arabia. Saudi air-traffic control assisted the plane the entire way,” the airline said in response to a reporter who noted the strange route that the plane took from Ben Gurion Airport to India.

Saudi Arabia is not among the countries to have normalized ties with Israel as a part of the Abraham Accords, but it did decide to open its airspace to all Israeli flights traveling east from the Jewish .

Itay Blumental, wrote: “Very beautiful: an Israeli plane took off yesterday from Ben Gurion Airport (Tel Aviv) to India via Ethiopia and did not give up visiting the skies of Jeddah and Mecca in Saudi Arabia.”

The Israeli journalist attached the tweet with a document of a company tracking the movement of aircraft showing the plane flying in a straight path over the Red Sea before turning left and passing over the cities of Jeddah and Mecca.

There was no immediate comment from the Saudi authorities on the matter.

In late August, the first Israeli commercial flight to Abu Dhabi, via Saudi airspace, departed from Ben Gurion Airport.

The plane was carrying two Israeli delegation headed by National Security Advisor Meir Ben Shabbat, and an American headed by senior adviser to US President Jared Kushner.

At the time, the official Israeli broadcasting organization said that Saudi Arabia had agreed to open its airspace for  the plane

On September 23, aircraft tracking data showed that an Israeli passenger plane flew over Saudi airspace en route to Bahrain.

Israel,  UAE and Bahrain signed agreements to normalize relations in mid-September at the White House under the auspices of US President Donald Trump.

E.M