The AP is reporting that the first ever commercial flight between Israel and the United Arab Emirates will fly next week and it will carry US and Israeli delegations.
This comes just 2 weeks after the countries agreed to normalize their relationship.
The flight is expected to be operated by El Al. Their operations have been suspended since March 27th due to COVID-19.
It’s unclear if the flight will operate over Saudi airspace, if it does it would mark the first time that an El Al flight is granted that permission. Reports have said that Saudi Arabia has granted permission to UAE airlines to overfly their airspace, but it would be truly incredible if permission was also granted to the Israeli flag carrier.
While this is just a one-off flight for now, hopefully there will be multiple daily nonstop flights in the near future between the 2 countries!
HT: tavster
Delegation includes Jared Kushner, national security adviser Robert O’Brien, outgoing US Special Representative for Iran Brian Hook and Special Representative for International Negotiations Avi Berkowitz.
The group will first stop in Israel for meetings, after which they will escort Israeli government experts in aviation, space, health and banking for talks with their Emirati counterparts.
I’m betting they will get KSA overfly..
Would be great PR for Bibi
theres are reports that elal auctioned off a seat for a single american citizen to fly with them to the highest bidder in elal miles and a certain Dan Eleff won the bidding with a grand total of 45,500,220,990,000,880,111,400,330,000 miles!
Congrats!
comment of the year !
Don’t think Dan has any matmid points…
Which with El Al’s incredibly confusing Matmid Program works out to one way in Economy Comfort
And then you you woke up and snoozed the alarm clock, rolled over and met a unicorn…
….with an honest politican riding it bareback, across a flat Earth, by the end of a rainbow, proclaiming ”Bears, Beets, Battlestar Galactica”.
Don’t make jokes everyone knows that Matmid points aren’t that valuable 🙂
That’s why he would need that amount to get on the flight.
We couldn’t get a 770 in there?
What makes it a commercial flight, if all passengers are officials?
Because it becomes news in the place of commercials
Probably means “first passenger flight”
Maybe in contrast to recent rescue flights, this is probably running along a commercial flight line that will be available for regular travelers.
I hope they’re prepared to file a refund complaint with the DOT if the flight gets canceled…. 😉
great comment!
Wonder how fast their refund will take when ElAl cancels their flight?
I thought ElAl is closed for business and not flying to America and back? Why is UAE any different?
This is a CHARTER flight, not a regular scheduled flight
Enter Wizz Air
Is this the beginning of the end of ELAL?
This may be their last flight 🙂
You know these delegates from the U.S. and Israel are serious about this peace deal if they’re willing to fly El Al to make it happen.
Hey there Mr. Dan- not sure if it’s my phone or wat… but I’m getting all the text alerts literally HOURS after they’re posted!
Maybe they could also operate their refund department for all the canceled flights for the very first time!
According to bechadrei it will fly over Saudi.
https://www.bhol.co.il/news/1133214
https://en.globes.co.il/en/article-el-al-to-face-fierce-competition-from-emirates-and-etihad-1001341464 “El Al has already shown that it does not fare so well when faced with competition.” lol ;)))