British Airways has confirmed that it will suspend flights to Israel until the end of March 2025 at the earliest, citing continued uncertainty over the security situation across the region.
The decision by the Heathrow-based carrier follows Virgin Atlantic and Delta Air Lines, which had already announced that they would be suspending flights to Israel from their respective hubs in London and New York until April 2025.
Last week, Delta Air Lines said it was “continuously monitoring the evolving security environment and assessing our operations based on security guidance and intelligence reports and will communicate any updates as needed.”
The few international carriers that were still operating flights to Tel Aviv quickly canceled services to Israel after Iran launched its second ballistic missile attack on the country at the end of September.
Israel has vowed to respond to Tehran’s aggression, which could, in turn, lead to a major escalation in the regional conflict. At the same time, Israel continues to fight Hezbollah in Lebanon and fighting rages on in Gaza.
Despite the very real threats to civil aviation, the European Air Safety Agency (EASA) told airlines earlier this month that they could resume flights to Israel after briefly issuing a ‘conflict zone bulletin’ that advised carriers to avoid the country.
The updated advisory warns that “Hezbollah’s possession of all-altitude capable cruise and ballistic missiles, along with the deployment of air assets operating at various altitudes, increases the risk of misidentification and miscalculation.”
However, regulators determined that flights could resume as long as “adequate mitigation measures” were put in place.
European low-cost airline EasyJet has also suspended flights to Israel until the end of March 2025, while Ryanair has currently axed its Tel Aviv schedule until December 2024. CEO Micheal O’Leary has, however, conceded that flights probably won’t resume until the end of March 2025.
United Airlines has decided to cancel its services to Tel Aviv on a rolling basis.
Seems like a major market opportunity for somebody to wet lease a few planes from an ACMI operator and start a charter operation with flights to Tel Aviv. It would be effortless to sell out at least one or two A330s/day between NYC-TLV at very high fares. People are still traveling and El Al has a monopoly on nonstops from North America and getting ultra-premium fares for economy service or forcing people into inconvenient routings.