Israeli airlines planned to extend and have new routes to India and other Asian destinations after the announcement of Saudia Arabia as it would be allowed to have their airspace utilized in order to consume less fuel cost and secret flight times.
Israeli Transportation Minister, Merav Michaeli confirmed that the plan execution would take several weeks as keeping in mind the absence of open relationship between both the countries, however including Oman in the extended corridor.
Recently, before the announcement of Riyadh, Israeli airlines could overfly Saudi region to UAE and Bahrain only. Un-handing restrictions on Saudi territory means that it would be use to reach Asia too.
Both flag carrier EI AI Israel Airlines and application for permission to fly over Saudia Arabia have already been applied by smaller rival Arkia recently, which results in decrease of flight time about 2-1/2 hrs from India and Thailand.
By flying south over the Red Sea around Yemen is the present routes to those destinations bypass Saudia airspace.
Even though Riyadh has yet to formally recognise Israel, the US moderate over expanded overflights, would eventually results in direct coordination between Israeli and Saudi civil aviation agencies, confirmed by Michaeli.
Further she added that it’s better situation to build a relation and so whatever we can achieve we should work for it and to have a relation with more and more trust rather than having a distant and zero communication.
Upon asking when the expended Saudi corridor will be implanted on which she replied that it’s not about months but weeks as she hoped.
Michaeli said that they gave initial approval for Israeli overflights back in 2018, Asia bound Israeli planes would skip Iran by continuing into the airspace of Oman.
Further she added that she is sure that this will be the refresher and it will worked out again. But still they need to worked out and be cautious, wait and watch until it came in execution.
An EI AI official, Shlomi Am Shalom said that it would be convenient as it would help to use smaller planes on this route to Mumbai which would result in less fuel consumption on its nearly daily flights to Thailand.
He added further that they can expend their flights to Melbourne and Tokyo, which is still in the planning process and have their large planes to be use in other places i.e Australia and Japan.
Tourism ministry of Israel said that expending in Saudi corridor would eventually results in drop in tickets prices by 20%. However, the airlines are not clear about price drop.
Similarly, It has been planned to start flights to Goa, India, in November and was considering new destinations such as Thailand and Sri Lanka using Airbus A321neoLR aircraft, said by Arkia.
Recently, Israeli official confirmed that he expected members of the country’s Muslim minority to fly directly to Saudia Arabia for pilgrimage by next year.
