On Tuesday morning, an Israeli private jet made history by being the first Israeli flight landing in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, reported KAN news.
On October 25th, the first flight from Saudi Arabia landed in Israel, when an Emirates 737 Royal Jet landed at Ben-Gurion airport on Monday evening.
This comes as the latest move among improving regional ties for Israel that started with 2020 Abraham Accords that led to the announcements of direct flights to Dubai, Morocco, and Bahrain.
Since Israel and Saudi Arabia do not share official relations, no commercial flights have been announced yet. Nonetheless, the recent flights represent a significant advance in Saudi-Israeli relations, as both nations finally opened their airspace just last year.
Prior to that agreement, Israeli national carrier, El Al, had to follow a long, winding route to Mumbai in order to avoid Saudi airspace, adding roughly two hours to the trip from Tel Aviv and putting the Israeli carrier at a huge disadvantage to competitors, who are allowed to fly direct.
It's worth mentioning that the following countries continue to ban both direct flights and overflying traffic to/from Israel: Afghanistan, Algeria, Bangladesh, Brunei, Iran, Iraq, Kuwait, Lebanon, Libya, Malaysia, Morocco, Oman, Pakistan, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Somalia, Syria, Tunisia, and Yemen.
