20.01.2021 - 17:04 UTC
After a seven-year hiatus, El Al Israel Airlines has announced it will temporarily resume flights between Tel Aviv Ben Gurion and the Red Sea resort town of Eilat Ramon, the only domestic flight route in Israel.
El Al stopped serving the route for security reasons in November 2013, leaving it to Israir (6H, Tel Aviv Ben Gurion), and Arkia Israeli Airlines (IZ, Tel Aviv Ben Gurion). The latter stopped flying to Eilat following the outbreak of COVID-19, but Israir continued to serve the route, which is subsidised by the state.
According to Israeli news reports, El Al was able to submit a tender to the government to operate to Eilat after reaching an agreement with its pilots, who had agreed to reduce their pay on the route. El Al pilots are paid for a minimum of five hours of flying but agreed to be paid for three hours on the route to enable the airline to submit a competitive bid.
The flag carrier in a statement did not specify a...
19.01.2021 - 14:23 UTC
El Al Israel Airlines unit Sun d'Or International Airlines (2U, Tel Aviv Ben Gurion) has joined its parent in a weekly flight curfew that has been in operation for years during Shabbat, from Friday sunset until Saturday sunset, local media in Israel reported.
Although the flag carrier has never flown on Shabbat, Sun D’Or has regularly conducted charter flights on the strictly observed weekly religious holiday.
Now, however, travel agencies trying to arrange packages that include Friday night or Saturday flights have been told that a policy change has already come into effect, the financial newspaper Globes reported.
Though wholly owned by El Al and using its aircraft, virtual carrier Sun D’Or has operated as an independent unit since 2011, specialising in the marketing of charter flights on a seasonal and ad-hoc basis.
For the Summer 2020 season, for example, it had been planning to operate flights from Tel Aviv Ben Gurion to destinations such as Naples Capodichino, Odesa, Salzburg, and Thessaloniki, but the flights never took place...
06.01.2021 - 17:18 UTC
Israir (6H, Tel Aviv Ben Gurion) expects that in 2021 it will have to cut its workforce by a further 15%, or about 60 employees, having already parted ways with 15% of its employees by the end of 2020, CEO Uri Sirkis has told the carrier’s employees in a letter.
Israir will likely stop flying on days of religious observance in Israel such as Shabbat under its new ownership, he claimed in the letter summarising the events of 2020, as seen by the newspapers TheMarker and Haaretz.
The company currently has around 400 employees. The country’s third coronavirus lockdown has forced it to put more workers on unpaid leave, so that as of the beginning of January 55% of the staff were on leave at least until May 2021.
“I’m aware of the difficulty in extending the period of unpaid leave, but I believe I need to be transparent in order to enable you and your families to prepare and make a living during this challenging period. I hope I’ll be wrong and we’ll...
05.01.2021 - 03:32 UTC
Beating its January 3 deadline to do so, Tel Aviv District Court approved the sale of Israir (6H, Tel Aviv Ben Gurion) to BGI Investments, following a protracted bidding process.
At the hearing, Ophir Naor, the lawyer and trustee appointed to oversee the sale on behalf of bondholders for IDB Development - and who had recommended BGI’s bid to the court above two other rival bids in a final public auction - was grateful for the ruling.
“We have been through an intensive sales process with a company that is involved in a crisis that is hardly simple in this crazy Covid-19 era. I was privileged to get to know a very special management and employees. We will transfer the company in an organised fashion into good hands, and I am sure they will care about the future of its employees.”
According to the judge, the bondholders had overwhelmingly rejected the two other bids by Moti Ben-Moshe, through Dor Alon, (rejected by 99%) and by real estate developer Yigal Dimri (by 75%), whose late bid...
