El Al Israel Airlines (LY, Tel Aviv Ben Gurion) will resume inbound services returning stranded passengers to Israel on March 4, 2026, after the government permitted a limited reopening of the airport and the country's airspace.

Transport Minister Miri Regev initially said that the airport would reopen in the evening of March 4. However, a subsequent Notice to Air Missions (NOTAM) authorised flights with prior permission to arrive and depart starting at 0910L (0710Z) on that day.

Arrivals are only authorised from the west. To start with, the authorities will only approve one arrival per hour to ensure that passengers can quickly leave the airport. The plan is to later increase this throughput to two flights per hour, but no firm timeline for the change has been announced.

Regev suggested that the "reopening of Israeli airspace" could happen after March 8, but she did not specify whether the plan was to lift all restrictions by then or retain some capacity caps.

El Al's first arriving flight was a cargo service from Athens, operated with the airline's B737-800(BCF). Challenge Airlines IL also received permission to operate cargo services from New York JFK, Oslo Gardermoen, and Liège while the airport remained closed during the night from March 3-4, ADS-B data shows.

Passenger repatriation flights are expected to begin later on March 4. El Al said it would prioritise returning Israelis stranded at 22 destinations in Europe, Thailand, and the United States. The carrier is not currently planning outbound flights and has suspended all sales until March 21 to free up capacity necessary for repatriation operations.

Meanwhile, Arkia Israeli Airlines and Israir began operating repatriation charters to arrive at Taba in neighbouring Egypt. The former is deploying A320-200s wet-leased from Electra Airways for these flights, while the latter is chartering the same aircraft type from Trade Air and Hello Jets. Those charters have been approved by the Israeli security apparatus to ensure that arriving passengers can swiftly cross the border into Israel.

Arkia has also operated at least one repatriation charter from Larnaca to Sharm el Sheikh, another Egyptian airport that remains relatively easily accessible overland from Israel.

El Al, as well as airHaifa, have so far been denied permission to operate repatriation flights to Taba.

Meanwhile, Fly Erbil (Erbil), a virtual carrier operating under the AOC of UR Airlines, began operating repatriation charters out of Sirnak in the Turkish part of Kurdistan, using an A320-200 chartered from BH Air - Balkan Holidays Air.