With major airlines canceling their flights, getting to and from Israel has become a costly and often crazy endeavor

Stuck in Spain and desperately searching for a way home, she realized that only Israeli airlines were a reliable option. But Israel’s national carrier, El Al, was demanding a whopping $1,000 for a one-way ticket from Madrid to Tel Aviv, and she declined.

Since she couldn’t find a cheaper option, she finally decided on a similarly priced ticket with the Israeli airline Israir. The departure from Barcelona is scheduled for Sunday.

Even weeks after the attack and in view of the ongoing threats of retaliation, travel to and from Israel remains difficult. Many airlines have canceled flights at short notice or stopped them altogether due to the security situation. United Airlines, one of the most important airlines between Israel and the USA, has suspended flights to Israel indefinitely. American Airlines has canceled flights and announced that it will not resume operations until April 2025 at the earliest.

The high prices of the few tickets available with El Al – the airline is known to fly to its home country even when other airlines do not – have caused discontent among people like Livne, who had hoped for different behavior from their national airline.

An El Al plane taxis at Ben Gurion Airport in Israel on August 1, 2024. (Tomer Neuberg/Flash90)

“El Al is really driving up prices and taking advantage of the lack of competition,” Livne said. “It’s pretty ugly to take advantage of a crisis like this. I would not have expected this, given the Israeli sense of solidarity.”

El Al seems to have concluded that it is best to remain silent for now. The company is reportedly not giving interviews at the moment. But the war period seems to have brought good business for the company so far. On Thursday, it reported record quarterly profits of $147.7 million for the months April through June.

It will be several months before the company can announce its financial results for the current period, but it seems confident that it will be able to continue to maintain a busy flight schedule. On the same day, El Al also announced a major fleet expansion with an order for up to 31 Boeing 737 Max aircraft.

The latest wave of flight cancellations is the most widespread since international airlines began grounding flights after the Israel-Gaza war began on October 7. It is triggering anxieties comparable to those felt in the early days of the pandemic, when health restrictions limited travel between Israel and the rest of the world and some worried whether it would weaken ties between Israeli Jews and those living in the diaspora.

Some of those concerns are now resurfacing as scarce flights become prohibitively expensive for many, and uncertainty about whether travel plans can go ahead may deter some potential air travelers.

Passengers at Ben Gurion Airport, August 1, 2024. (Avshalom Sassoni/Flash90)

The most reliable option has proven to be El Al, one of the few commercial airlines with missile defense technology on board, although it only offers limited nonstop flights from US destinations to Israel.

Silicon Valley, for example, has traditionally relied on United, the only airline with direct flights from SFO to TLV. The suspension of flights represents a significant disruption to trade between the two technology centers, said Sharon Vanek, executive director of the California-Israel Chamber of Commerce.

“The lack of direct flights and the unstable situation in the Middle East could lead to fewer face-to-face meetings, which are often crucial to building trust and closing deals, and could weaken these international business relationships,” Vanek wrote in an email to JTA.

Despite these challenges, many American Jews are determined to find a way to Israel. For some, that means coming to Europe and then finding the cheapest flight on an Israeli budget airline.

Emily Pagano, for example, landed in Israel on Thursday after taking several flights from Phoenix, Arizona, via Athens. The purpose of her trip is to visit her 22-year-old daughter, who had arrived a few days earlier as part of a volunteer program.

Pagano was determined to come because she wanted to support her daughter, who had the courage to volunteer in a country that, according to news reports, could be bombed at any time.

“For me as a mother, it was very scary to put my daughter in potential danger, but that is nothing compared to what the parents are going through whose children are being held hostage in Gaza,” she said.