Ryanair plans to fly full summer schedule to Israel, predicts others will too
Chief executive of major subsidiary Ryanair DAC says his airline will be ‘back there for the summer,’ expresses hope that Ben Gurion Airport’s low cost Terminal 1 will reopen
European budget airline Ryanair expects to fly a full summer schedule to Tel Aviv this summer, a senior executive said Thursday.
The airline, like most others, has canceled flights to Israel for the foreseeable future, amid the ongoing multifront war that began when the Hamas terror group attacked the Jewish state on October 7, 2023, killing some 1,200 people and taking another 251 hostages.
“We’ve got a full schedule I think for Tel Aviv…so we will be back in there for the summer as I think most of the other airlines will be,” said chief executive Eddie Wilson of subsidiary Ryanair DAC, according to Reuters.
He said the airline follows the guidance of the European air regulator, EASA. The regulator most recently recommended against using Israeli airspace in late September, amid escalated fighting between Israel and the Hezbollah terror group in Lebanon, but retracted that guidance in early October.
A ceasefire with Lebanon has been in place since December.
Asked whether he expects Ben Gurion Airport’s Terminal 1, used by low-cost airlines, to reopen, Wilson said, “We would hope that they would take the sensible decision to open that.”
Since the outbreak of the war with Hamas’s attack fifteen months ago, foreign airlines have repeatedly canceled and resumed their flights to and from Israel.
Amid the drop in flights, Israel closed Terminal 1, angering low-cost carriers by forcing them to use the full-cost Terminal 3.
In recent months, US airlines as well as a majority of European carriers completely stopped flying to Israel during heightened fighting in Gaza and Lebanon, and as tensions rose in the Middle East.
That has left Israel’s national El Al as the only airline flying from Tel Aviv on direct routes to North America. The lack of competition has led to a severe shortage of seat availability, while driving up airfares by 100 percent, and in some periods by much more.
Amid the high prices, Israeli lawmakers agreed earlier this month to make legal changes to canceled flight compensation rights for air passengers to help ease the financial costs of disruptions during the war period and help bring back foreign airlines to the country.
Additionally, a forum of leading tech executives and investors has launched TechAir, a new seasonal Israeli airline, which plans to operate a total of 36 direct weekly flights that depart at midnight from Tel Aviv and land in New York early in the morning on weekdays, with one flight departing over the weekend, starting later this month.
El Al has also capped basic economy prices to four key international transit hubs — Athens, Vienna, Dubai and Frankfurt — in an effort to lower costs for travelers.
Sharon Wrobel contributed to this report.
