Travelers walk with their luggage in the Ben Gurion Airport near Tel Aviv, Israel. Photo / AP / File
Travelers walk with their luggage in the Ben Gurion Airport near Tel Aviv, Israel. Photo / AP / File
Travel out of Israel continues to be limited, with many airlines pausing operations out of Tel Aviv, since armed conflict with Hamas started this weekend.
Cathay, Lufthansa and Air France are among the carriers that have paused or reduced routes to Ben Gurion International Airport. Others are running only limitedservices, with few last-minute airfares available.
The Israeli civil aviation authority is advising travellers to expect delays to travel.
“Foreign airlines are currently reducing and occasionally even cancelling their flight schedule to Israel,” said a statement on Sunday. The statement said Israeli carriers had been allowed to increase capacity “to certain destinations”.
Israeli flag carrier El Al says it is still operating flights as scheduled.
Israeli authorities said they would be updating their website twice a day with details of inbound flights with capacity, warning “the timetable during this period may change and may even significantly be reduced at short notice”.
Civil Aviation bodies for the EU and US have been advising air carriers to proceed with caution in Israeli airspace, but have not banned commercial flights to Israel.
Rockets are fired towards Israel from the Gaza Strip on October 9. Photo / AP
Russia’s Federal Agency for Air Transport has put a curfew on night flights until at least October 16, “due to [the] unstable military and political situation in Israel”. Two Russian airlines, Red Wings and Azimut, still operate flights into Israel.
The attacks which were launched out of Gaza on Saturday caught many airlines by surprise, with flights diverted as far away as California.
United flight UA954 from San Francisco to Tel Aviv spent 14 hours flying a loop to nowhere this weekend. The flight was recalled over Greenland and advised to turn back midway through the 12000km journey, following news of rocket attacks on Saturday morning.
United flight UA954 from San Francisco became a 14-hour flight to nowhere following the outbreak of war in Gaza. Photo / Flight Radar
“The safety of our customers and employees is our top priority,” a United spokesperson told US media on Monday, after its flights were suspended to Israel.
“We operated two scheduled flights out of Tel Aviv late Saturday and early Sunday and accommodated our customers, crews, and employee travellers who were at the airport.”
Links into Asia and the Pacific were also limited with Hong-Kong based airlines pausing operations.
Hong Kong’s main carrier, Cathay Pacific Airways, told Associated Press, that “in view of the latest situation in Israel,” it was cancelling its Tel Aviv flights scheduled for Tuesday and Thursday.
“The safety of our passengers and crew are our top priority. We will continue to monitor the situation very closely,” the airline said on its website, adding it would provide another update on Friday ahead of its third weekly flight on Sunday to the Israeli city.
Following a temporary flight suspension from UAE, Etihad and Flydubai had grounded flights into Israel amid escalating conflicts on Monday.
UAE carrier Emirates said it would continue flying three scheduled links between Tel Aviv and Dubai, and was watching developments in Israeli airspace.
“The situation is dynamic and we are carefully reviewing all factors on an hour-by-hour basis. The safety of our passengers, employees and operations will always be our top priority,” said a spokesperson for the carrier.
Last night New Zealand’s MFAT reviewed its travel advisory for the ongoing armed conflict in Israel, advising New Zealanders to avoid non-essential travel. Four areas were upgraded to the highest travel warning - do not travel - applying to parts of the Lebanese border, the area surrounding Gaza, and the Golan Heights, towards Syria.
“New Zealanders currently in Gaza are advised to depart as soon as it is safe to do so,” reads the advisory, saying that the New Zealand government has extremely limited ability to repatriate New Zealand nationals in the Gaza Palestinian territory.
