Saudi Arabia, a key to new Israeli air routes to India

Israeli airlines aim to open new routes to India when Saudi Arabia's announcement that it will lift its current airspace restrictions on planes from Israel becomes a reality.

Although Saudi Arabian authorities announced on Friday that they would allow flights to and from Israel, Israeli Transport Minister Merav Michaeli believes that it may take several weeks to implement the new routes, given the lack of relations between the two countries and the recent talks to include Oman in the expanded corridor.

Prior to the announcement, Israeli airlines could only fly over Saudi territory to the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain. But the historic visit of US President Joe Biden has allowed the old restrictions to be lifted and a step towards a possible rapprochement between Saudi Arabia and Israel, a goal Biden has been working towards for months.

Saudi Civil Aviation, for its part, justified the decision by citing the necessary fulfilment of "its obligations under the 1944 Chicago Convention, which stipulates non-discrimination between civilian aircraft used in international air navigation". They further claimed that this action would further "efforts to consolidate the Kingdom's position as a hub connecting three continents and strengthen international air connectivity".

To avoid Saudi airspace, these routes flew south over the Red Sea around Yemen. This increased the time and fuel costs for Israeli airlines.

This would therefore help El Al Israel Airlines' efficiency, allowing it to use smaller planes on its route to India, saving fuel on its almost daily flights to Thailand, said Shlomi Am Shalom, a company official, who added that "we can take a big plane and use it in other places like Australia and Japan".

Following the announcement, both El Al Israel Airlines, Israel's strongest airline, and its rival Arkia, applied for permits to fly over Saudi Arabia. With these new routes, the airlines said they will be able to fly from Israel to India or Thailand in less than two and a half hours.

Minister Michaeli said the removal of restrictions would eventually mean direct coordination between Israeli and Saudi civil aviation agencies, although she made clear that Riyadh has yet to formally recognise Israel. 

"It's a better situation than total alienation and zero communication. So whatever we can achieve, we should try and work to build more and more of a relationship and more and more trust," she added.

All of this would result in lower airfares, which the Israeli Ministry of Tourism itself has set at around 20% of the current price. This would improve the flow of travellers to Israel and, therefore, its economy and the development of the tourism sector.