Due to increased security concerns in the region, several major airlines have continued to cancel flights to Israel and other parts of the Middle East.
The Lufthansa Group, which also includes Austrian Airlines, Brussels Airlines, Swiss and Eurowings, has now suspended all flights to Tel Aviv, Amman, Beirut, Erbil and Tehran until August 26th.
Meanwhile, budget airline Ryanair has cancelled all flights to and from Israel through September 30. The airline blamed “operational constraints beyond our control” for the expansion of cancellations of its Tel Aviv flights. However, other budget airline Wizz Air has already resumed its flights to Israel.
The US airlines American Airlines, Delta Air Lines and United Airlines have also extended the suspension of their flights to and from Tel Aviv.
Delta has postponed the suspension of flights to Israel from August 31 to September 30, and United has also suspended its flights to Tel Aviv indefinitely.
American Airlines, which has not resumed flights to Israel since the Hamas attacks in October 2023, has currently suspended flights to Tel Aviv until March 29, 2025, after originally planning to resume the route in late October.
Currently, Israeli carrier El Al is the only airline flying between Tel Aviv and the United States. El Al has also increased capacity on its most popular European routes to fill the gap left by the temporarily suspended flights to Israel.
Dina Ben Tal Ganancia, CEO of El Al, said: “Since the war broke out over ten months ago, we have been operating in a complex market and under uncertain conditions.
“The cancellations by foreign airlines require that we do everything possible to provide an appropriate response to the entire Israeli public.”
Ben Tal Ganancia made her comments as El Al announced its second-quarter financial results, which included a 33 percent year-on-year increase in revenue to $839 million and net profit of $147 million for the quarter – up from profit of $59 million in the second quarter of 2023.
The airline said it achieved an “exceptional” load factor of 92 percent in the second quarter “due to the reduced number of flights to Israel on foreign airlines,” which led to increasing demand for its flights.
