Abraham Accords
I am personally interested in the history of politics and military. Especially, I follow productions about Middle East. I have also watched some series and documentaries for a few times. One of the most popular productions is “6 days war” that I think many of you watched. I observed that Syria,Egypt, and Jordan attacked Israel (1967) in the documentary and their grudges against Israel. After that, the first idea in my mind is that there is no longer normal relation between Israel and other islamic countries in Middle East. I thought it was true according to my work experiences because Israel and Saudi Arabia carry out hard restrictions to each other. For example, an aircraft that took off from Israel can not fly over Saudi Arabia air space. It is valid for another aircraft which took off from Saudi Arabia. However, an agreement was announced that someone thinks ıt’s dangerous in previous days. Israel and UAE has deal with Abraham Accords under normalizations. After, I did a few searches, I have learned that UAE is not only state which has deal with Israel. In 1979, Egypt signed an accord called Camp David with Israel. Then, Jordan has a deal with Israel in 1994, Vadi Arabe agreement. Although It was even strictly forbidden to dial to each other countries in previous times, today they have a treaty. I am sure that the accord would likely impact Middle East geography but our main goal is what its impacts on the aviation.
Before The Accord
If an airline wants to use an airspace, it must take a permission from a responsible country before the flight. If not, you are able to see fight jets around the aircraft during the flight. Korean Airlines flight 007 that was shot down by a Soviet Su-15 in 1983 is the one of an obvious samples about overflight permissions. When I was working in the general aviation department, we was planning almost all over the world but the most problematic flights are Israel and Saudi Arabia. As I mentioned before, Saudi never let it fly throughout its airspace. So, we add an extra leg to the schedule. For instance, if there is a flight from Tel-aviv to Dubai, we re-plan schedules as Tel-Aviv — Amman — Dubai. Now, the aircraft can fly.
As you see above the radar image, the route is too long. Due to high oil price in the aviation, the new treaty would be profitable for Gulf airlines and particularly El-Al. In addition to this, Israel spends 110 $ million a year to perform security precautions.
After The Accord
A peace flight that includes Trump’s son in law and Jared Kushner the chief advisor and Meir Ben-Shabbat the national security advisor of Israel was performed from Israel to UAE. The flight has been recorded as the first flight between two countries. LY971 represents the UAE’s international dialling code. The El Al aircraft was decorated with the word for “peace” in Arabic, English and Hebrew.
There are two impressive cases in this flight. First, although Saudi airspace is absolutely forbidden for aircrafts under Israel registration in normal conditions, the aircraft has flown through the airspace of Saudi Arabia. Secondly, Israel authorities could not clearly trust Saudis so Boeing 737–8 was equipped with missile defense system. Fortunately, any severe case was not happened. Thank to the accord, Israel has come close to Gulf countries where petrol are abound in a lot. Gulf countries take opportunities to use technologic advancements as well. The deal would positively affect El-Al that is now in trouble economically.
So, what are advantages or disadvantages in Turkish Civil airline? Turkish Airlines is the biggest foreign operator in Tel-Aviv. Particularly, tracks of Tel-Aviv — İstanbul — Asia / Middle East have so many passenger demands. As it is seen, the agreement mostly impacts Turkish Airlines in the way of passengers and cargo. Moreover, in the first image, an airplane from Middle East to Israel must fly throughout Turkey because of the closure of Syrian airspace. So its means that incomes of overflight would be decrease.
As you know, Middle East is the most chaotic geography in the world. Due to rich oil reservoirs, new scenarios are able to be seen in the future. We have different questions such as; is there fourth country that sign with Israel; will restrictions on Qatar Airways conduce to different scenes? Let we see all of them in times.
