(JNS) The head of United Arab Emirates budget airline, flydubai, said on Tuesday that the demand for travel from Israel is so great that the company will likely need to increase the number of its Tel Aviv-Dubai flights to 100 per week.

In an interview with the Israeli business daily Globes, Flydubai CEO Ghaith Al Ghaith, who was in Israel last week for the launch of flydubai’s Dubai-Tel Aviv route, said “a special situation has been created by the coronavirus. Our country is safe and green, and because there are not many destinations that you can fly to without going into isolation, there is an opportunity that we are seizing with both hands.”

“For Israelis, it is an excellent destination, and a part of this is Israel’s Arab population,” he added.

Al Gaith continued, “After the issue of visas is solved, we expect a massive number of tourists from the UAE who will want to visit Al-Aqsa [mosque] and historical sites.”

He also noted that “80 percent of the residents of the UAE are foreigners, and that will also be part of the tourism because until now they have not been able to fly to Tel Aviv from Dubai.”