Saudi Arabia opened its airspace for the first time to a commercial flight to Israel with the inauguration on Thursday 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 7-1/2 hours, marking a diplomatic shift for Riyadh that Israel says was fueled by shared concern over Iranian influence in the region. “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. Saudi Arabia does not recognize Israel. Riyadh has not formally confirmed granting the Air India plane overflight rights. While the move ended a 70-year-old ban on planes flying to or from Israel through Saudi airspace, there is as yet no indication that it will be applied for any Israeli airline.<br/>
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Austrian Airlines cancelled 150 out of 380 flights, or 40%, on March 22 for continued union negotiations, affecting more than 12,000 passengers. Austrian said the cancellations were made because of works council meetings, which included cockpit and cabin crew members. Affected by the cancellation were flights between Vienna and Amsterdam, Basel, Bologna, Berlin, Belgrade, Brussels, Bucharest, Cairo, Copenhagen, Cologne, Düsseldorf, Frankfurt, Geneva, Graz, Hamburg, Innsbruck, Kiev, Leipzig, London, Lyon, Milan, Minsk, Moscow, Munich, Paris, Prague, Sofia, Stuttgart, Teheran, Tel Aviv, Warsaw, Venice, Zagreb and Zurich. The flights to Washington and Toronto also had to be canceled. The flight to Newark had to be canceled because of weather conditions on the US east coast. Austrian Airlines CEO Kay Kratky said: “The short-term expansion of the combat measures clearly indicates that the union's and the works council’s target is a disruption. It is incomprehensible and absolutely unacceptable to us that higher salary demands are carried out on the backs of our customers while competition is intensifying as well.” Austrian Airlines has 3,900 cockpit and crew members.<br/>