When Flight LY971 made history

Our Correspondent

The first flight to the UAE from Israel landed on the tarmac of Abu Dhabi airport at 3:38 p.m. local time on August 31 carrying a delegation from Israel and the United States, following the historic August 13 accord between the two countries.

 

The chartered El Al airliner carried US President’s son-in-law and senior Middle East adviser Jared Kushner, US National Security Adviser Robert O’Brien, and Head of Israel’s National Security Council Meir Ben-Shabbat.  Expressing his happiness to be heading the Israeli delegation, Ben-Shabbat read his statement in both Arabic and Hebrew.

 

“This is a historic flight and we hope that this would start a more historic journey for the Middle East and beyond,” Kushner said. “The future should not be determined by the past.”

 

Flight LY971 – numbered to represent the UAE’s international dialling code – made the three-hour trip, crossing Saudi Arabian airspace, normally blocked to Israeli air traffic. The return flight will be numbered LY972, after Israel’s international dialling code.

 

The Boeing 737 flight would have taken seven hours if it had not been allowed to use Saudi airspace, its captain Tal Becker said. Israel and Saudi Arabia do not share diplomatic relations.

 

Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu called it the “first ever Israeli commercial flight”  to the UAE, and the UAE Foreign Ministry termed it the same.

The plane flew the flags of all three nations and had “peace” newly stencilled above the pilot’s side window in English, Hebrew and Arabic.