Virgin Atlantic to resume Israel flights ahead of holidays

British airline Virgin Atlantic will resume flights between London and Tel Aviv from September 25, a week before the Jewish holidays, according to foreign media reports. Flights can be booked on the airline’s website, with options to connect to the United States.

Like British Airways, Virgin Atlantic will offer direct flights between London Heathrow and Tel Aviv with a short stop for crew change in Larnaca, Cyprus, although passengers will remain on board. It is still not safe for the crew to remain in Tel Aviv. On the return leg, the aircraft will fly non-stop from Tel Aviv to London. Prior to October 7, 2023, Virgin Atlantic operated two daily flights between Tel Aviv and London. From September 25, 2024, Virgin Atlantic will resume with just one daily flight. Virgin Atlantic will use larger aircraft on the route than rival British Airways, which uses narrow-body Airbus A321s.

With its regular flights between London and New York, Virgin Atlantic hopes to take market share from El Al, which has a monopoly on direct flights between Tel Aviv and New York. El Al recently added a flight on the Tel Aviv-New York route, and all 280 seats were sold out within three minutes. El Al has almost no seats left on its Tel Aviv-New York flights during the holidays, except for premium and business class, with round-trip tickets ranging from $4,500 to $7,500.

Over the past week, the Lufthansa Group, the world’s largest airline group, which consists of Lufthansa Airlines, Austrian Airlines, Brussels Airlines, Swiss International Air Lines and Eurowings, has resumed flights to and from Israel, after a hiatus of more than a month. The group operates several flights to six destinations in Western Europe: Frankfurt, Munich, Dusseldorf, Vienna, Brussels and Zurich. Italian airline ITA also resumed flights today with one daily flight between Tel Aviv and Rome. Other foreign airlines that have resumed flights to Israel include Ethiopian Airlines, Wizz Air, Bulgaria Air, Aegean, Air Europa, Iberia and Tarom. Polish airline LOT also resumed flights to Israel on Tuesday.

But Ryanair has announced that it will not resume flights to Israel until the end of October.

This article was published in Globes, Israeli Business News – en.globes.co.il – on September 10, 2024.

© Copyright Globes Publisher Itonut (1983) Ltd., 2024.