El Al faces new competition as foreign airlines flock back to Israel - opinion

Visualize the signs of spring – blossoming flowers, trees budding with new leaves, and the sighting of animals, and plug in “airlines” and the comparison is ideal. The current status quo has given numerous carriers the confidence to resume flights to Israel.

We have always had the Emirates/Fly Dubai and Etihad airlines, with over 10 flights a day; expect that number to increase over the next two months.

Forget about Turkish Airlines and the antisemitic, offensive, tyrannical president of Turkey, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, with his unceasing contemptuous comments about Israel. Turkish Airlines has left Israel, and, hopefully, its tepid steps to return to Ben-Gurion Airport will be met with the stoic response that it is no longer needed.

The North American market remains Israel’s number one hub, which is why El Al flies over 50 flights a week to Newark, JFK, Boston, and Los Angeles. Its flights remain quite full, with high fares eclipsing all historical prices.

This will change. United Airlines already has two flights a day from Israel to Newark; Delta is flying to JFK; and Air Canada is flying to Toronto. Those US- and Canadian-based airlines are already making plans to increase their capacity. Next month, United is bringing back its Chicago and Washington routes and is planning even more daily flights to Newark next year. Air Canada is adding Montreal to its flight network next summer.

This indicates that many airlines believe that while we will not have the post-COVID boom, which saw air traffic numbers escalate by hundreds of percent, tourists will resume visiting Israel. Although Israelis may travel in greater numbers, these foreign carriers need the tourists to be lucrative.

The tourists who have come here during the last two years have been few in number. Many delegations of politicians and Jewish lay leaders did visit Israel. A wonderful group of Christians came here for the recent Feast of Tabernacles, but Israelis are mainly the ones filling 80% of each plane. That number will change as long as there is relative quiet. It is too early to expect a huge influx for both Hanukkah and Christmas; few groups have made plans to return here in 2026.

Virgin Atlantic Airlines was flying between London and Tel Aviv until the Israel-Hamas War broke out. Its Israeli CEO, Shai Weiss, quietly decided to close his office in Israel, cease all operations, and sever ties between Ben-Gurion Airport and London. He has just been replaced, and those in the industry are hoping that when Corneel Koster takes over on January 1, 2026, he will reverse the company’s decision.

While many take umbrage with the government using the label “revival” for this war, make no mistake that the tourism industry sees this period as “Operation Revival.”

Prices will fall, with winter fares already dropping by 20%. As more foreign carriers fly here with more tourists, there will be greater competition and lower fares.

Previously, Halevy was the CEO of the credit card company ICC-CAL; he brings extensive experience in finance and technology to his new position. This is one of the few times in El Al’s history that it has brought in an outsider, and someone with no experience in the airline industry.

He will have a very short learning curve. Although El Al had a near monopoly on many of its routes, and was able to set stratospheric prices, it appears that advantage has ended. The company’s shares have already dropped 14% as the market smells the blood in the water. El Al has been blessed with a preponderance of excellent staff during the last two years; the question is how Halevy utilizes their skills.

Some airlines, such as American Airlines, have chosen to bypass Israel, choosing to use their aircraft on what they assume are more lucrative routes. Although they are dropping rumors that they may deign to bring their planes to Ben-Gurion Airport, nothing official has been posted.

When it first resumed service to Israel, after brushing the market aside for decades, there was a lot of anticipation that it would give El Al, Delta, and United a run for their money. Its entry was poorly executed, embarrassingly implemented, and its departure has left very few in the industry even noticing the carrier’s absence.

One airline that has taken the opposite view is Iberia, which has announced that it is resuming flights to Israel, with services expected to restart today, after a temporary suspension.

But “mucho gusto” is not a greeting they will encounter. The country’s prime minister, Pedro Sanchez, has decided to use Israel as a scapegoat to distract from his own troubles. He persuaded the Spanish parliament to enshrine in law an arms embargo on Israel, stating that what Israel did in Gaza was “genocide.” He has urged that Israel be excluded from all international sports competitions in Spain.

One would hope that Israelis will eschew visiting Spain until this rabid antisemitism is put back in the bottle. One would also hope that flying Iberia, to simply transit in Madrid or Barcelona, would also be snubbed. Today, we have alternatives; there are airlines and countries that want Israeli tourists.

There is Wizz Air, a low-cost carrier hell-bent on gaining every seat to cities throughout Europe. It hopes that enticing prices will encourage customers to take to the skies. They will push our Israeli carriers, with a far larger cost structure, to lure Israelis to fly them and pay a hefty surcharge.

Arkia, with its new Airbus A330, has very large eyes. The airline sees itself filling this sparkling plane with passengers headed to New York, Phuket, and Saigon. It is a bold move that hopefully will succeed.

The challenge is that Arkia’s operation, which initially based its flights to Eilat, and then branched out across Europe, has not built a strong marketing or sales department. Trying to contact them is a nightmare; their website remains confusing, and with so few offices abroad, they lead the list in customer complaints among the three Israeli airlines.

Arkia now has one plane that can attract economy, premium, and business class passengers. Of course, if something happens to that plane, the airline has yet to outline how it will respond to stranded customers. Hopefully, Arkia will also revive the airline from top to bottom, so that it will be in a position to thrive in what is hoped to be a busy industry.

It has been a horrific two years since the Hamas terrorist attacks on October 7; the loss in human life is immeasurable, and the fragile ceasefire has barely begun. Yet, the revival of the tourism industry has commenced.

There is a quiet optimism that from the nadir of all that Israel has experienced, the path upward has slowly begun. It will not be like the huge revival following the end of the COVID pandemic, when there was a quick and sudden return to airplanes and overseas destinations.

This revival will be slow and steady, with bumps along the way as 2025 segues into 2026, and the seeds of the tourism revival sprout into a strong recovery.