Saudi Arabia temporarily closes airspace to Israeli flights

• Author: Elad Benari
• Published date: 26 May 2021
• Publication title: Israel National News (Israel)

Israir flight 661, which was scheduled to take off at 9:00 a.m. local time, was apparently held up because Saudi Arabia refused to grant the necessary permits even though an El Al flight took off for Dubai on Tuesday afternoon with permission to fly through Saudi airspace.

While Israel and Saudi Arabia do not have formal relations, Saudi Arabia said in November it would allow Israeli flights to use its airspace en route to Dubai.

Without permission to fly over Saudi Arabia, the Tel Aviv-Dubai route would be unsustainable as flights from Israel to the United Arab Emirates would take over eight hours instead of three.

In recent years, there have been reports of a possible rapprochement between Saudi Arabia and Israel, particularly in the wake of the Abraham Accords, which saw Israel signing normalization deals with the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, Morocco...