TUS Airways operates first commercial flight between Israel and Qatar

This Sunday, November 20, the first commercial flight between Israel and Qatar, two countries without diplomatic relations, left Tel Aviv for Doha, as part of a special programme on the occasion of the FIFA World Cup. 

On November 18, the Cypriot airline TUS Airways received the green light from the Qatar Civil Aviation Authority to operate six direct flights from Tel Aviv to Doha and six others in the opposite direction during the 2022 World Cup.

This Sunday morning, therefore the flight U8 1162 left Ben Gurion airport in Tel-Aviv: “History is being written with this first direct flight between Tel-Aviv and Doha“, declared Lior Hayat, the spokesman of Israeli diplomacy, because it is “the result of negotiations between the Jewish state and FIFA“.

Taking off at 11:14 (UTC+2) from Ben Gurion Airport, the TUS Airways Airbus A320 aircraft registered 5B-DDL was completely full, with 180 passengers on board. It arrived safely at Doha at 14:44 (UTC+3).

Qatar was the first Gulf state to establish trade relations with Israel in 1996. This led to an official visit by Israeli then-Prime Minister Shimon Peres. But in 2000, the Jewish state’s trade office in Qatar was closed and relations between the two countries were finally severed in 2009, against the backdrop of the Israeli military operation in the Gaza Strip.