Delta flights to Tel Aviv on hold at least until Sept. 30
Aug 20, 2024 21:43:45 GMT -5
Post by shalom on Aug 20, 2024 21:43:45 GMT -5
Delta flights to Tel Aviv reportedly on hold at least until Sept. 30
A spokesman for the airline neither confirmed nor denied the suspension of flights.
(August 20, 2024 / JNS)
Delta Air Lines will not resume flights to Israel before the end of next month amid ongoing regional tension due to Iran’s threat to attack the Jewish state, Israeli media reported, citing “an official notice to travel agents in Israel.”
“Delta does not have any additional comment or guidance beyond this recent news hub update at this time,” Morgan Durrant, a spokesman for the airline in Atlanta, told JNS. “If this changes, we have made a note to reach out to you.”
The update Durrant cited states that Delta “paused” flights between John F. Kennedy International Airport in Queens, N.Y., and Tel Aviv “through Aug. 31 due to ongoing conflict in the region.”
Delta said this week in a travel advisory that it “extended” its “waiver for all customers currently booked to/from Tel Aviv’s Ben-Gurion Airport so they can rebook their travel on available flights through Dec. 15, 2024.”
It added that “the current security situation in Israel may impact travel to/from/through” Tel Aviv and that customers should “check flight status frequently for up-to-the-minute information” or sign up for email updates.
For tickets issued between Oct. 7 and Sept. 30, Delta is offering waivers of fare differences for new flights, which must take off by Dec. 15, per the carrier’s site.
With United Airlines also having suspended flights until further notice, Delta’s reported decision to suspend flights until the end of September would leave Israel’s El Al carrier as the only airline offering direct service to and from the United States for the foreseeable future.
Both airlines had just resumed service this spring after suspending flights, like most carriers, in the wake of Hamas’s Oct. 7 massacre. American Airlines has not restarted flights to Tel Aviv since Oct. 7.
It remains unclear if any of the carriers will resume flights before the start of the Jewish High Holiday season, which begins after sundown on Oct. 2 with Rosh Hashanah.
During last year’s holiday season, El Al charged about $1,500 for a roundtrip ticket from Tel Aviv to New York. This year, tickets are being sold for about $2,000, Israel’s Globes business daily reported on Sunday.
Many global airlines, including Lufthansa, Austrian, Iberia and Brussels Airlines, suspended service to Israel late last month amid escalating regional tensions following the killing of Hezbollah terror chief Fuad Shukr in Beirut and Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh in Tehran.
An Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps deputy commander, Ali Fadavi, said on Monday that Iran and its terrorist proxies in the region would strike Israel “more severely” than in its unprecedented April 14 attack.
“It is us who will decide the time and place of the revenge. It will definitely take place … at the proper time and in the right place,” he said, per Iran’s official Fars News Agency.
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