NEW YORK TIP):  Saudi Arabia opened its airspace for the first time to a commercial flight to Israel with the inauguration on Thursday, March 22, of an Air India route between New Delhi and Tel Aviv.

Air India 139 landed at Tel Aviv’s Ben Gurion Airport after a flight of over 7 and a half hours.

“This is a really historic day that follows two years of very, very intensive work,” Israeli Tourism Minister Yariv Levin said in a radio interview, adding that using Saudi airspace cut travel time to India by around two hours and would reduce ticket prices.

The Air India Boeing 787-8 Dreamliner entered Saudi airspace at around 1645 GMT and overflew the kingdom at 40,000 feet for about three hours, coming within 60 km (37 miles) of the capital Riyadh, according to the Flight radar monitoring app. It then crossed over Jordan and the occupied West Bank into Israel.