Irish low-cost carrier Ryanair plans to operate a full flight schedule to Israel this summer, Eddie Wilson, a senior executive at the company, told Reuters Thursday. Ryanair has not landed at Ben Gurion Airport since February 2024 and, apart from Wilson's remarks, no official announcement has been made about resuming flights to Israel.
Meanwhile, the Hungarian low-cost airline Wizz Air, which currently operates flights on the Tel Aviv-Larnaca route, will expand its operations in Israel starting on Wednesday and will operate routes to Abu Dhabi, Rome and Milan, London, Warsaw, Krakow and Budapest.
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Ryanair has not landed at Ben Gurion Airport since February 2024
(Photo: Shutterstock)
Most of the world's major airlines have not yet resumed flying to Israel. The route to the U.S. is operated only by El Al, and Air France and British Airways have not yet resumed flights to Ben Gurion Airport.
The Lufthansa Group, which includes Lufthansa Airlines, Swiss, Austrian Airlines, Brussels Airlines and Eurowings, has also extended the suspension of its flights to Israel until January 31, 2025, and it is unclear whether it will be extended again.
The 2024 summary report recently published by the Israel Airports Authority states that "In the past year and throughout the war, about 20 international airlines continued to fly to Israel and offered the Israeli passenger a variety of about 50 destinations. The five most popular destinations were Greece with over 1.8 million passengers, the U.S. with about 1.4 million passengers, Cyprus with about 1 million passengers, the United Arab Emirates with about 890,000 passengers, and France with about 850,000 passengers.
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"The airlines that led the majority of passenger traffic at Ben Gurion Airport in 2024 were El Al with about 6.5 million passengers, Israir with about 1.4 million passengers, Arkia with about 1 million passengers, as well as Fly Dubai and Blue Bird with about half a million passengers each."
In addition to Ben Gurion Airport, flights from Haifa to Cyprus and Athens have recently begun operating and, starting next month, Israir will begin operating flights to Athens from Ramon Airport, making it possible to fly abroad from three different airports in Israel for the first time in many years.