The military escalation in the Middle East, centered in Israel and the Gaza Strip, continues to lead more international airlines to suspend their flights to Tel Aviv.
Since Saturday, companies like American Airlines, Delta Air Lines, United Airlines, Iberia, Finnair, Ryanair, easyJet, and Air France-KLM, among others, have been following this course.
One of the last major international airlines that continued to operate with up to five daily flights to Tel Aviv, even with wide-body aircraft to offer more capacity, was Turkish Airlines. But just moments ago, at 17:15 UTC, the company confirmed the suspension of its flights and those of its low-cost subsidiary, Anadolu Jet, until further notice.
The last flight, operated by an Airbus A330-300, had departed from Tel Aviv at 18:53 local time (15:53 UTC).
Those passengers with bookings for flights between the 7th and 23rd of October inclusive and that were issued before the first date will have access to flexible policies for rescheduling, changes, or refunds. The details of these can be seen on this link from the Turkish Airlines website.
Considering it has one of the largest destination networks in the world, Turkish’s exit deals a significant blow to Israel’s global connectivity, which now relies mostly on airlines like EL AL or Emirates, being this the last foreign one remaining with scheduled flights.
Indeed, the airline based in Dubai reported on Tuesday afternoon that it would continue operating regular flights to Tel Aviv and Amman. However, they are monitoring the situation and are in contact with the relevant authorities.
Nevertheless, they have established a flexible policy for those passengers with tickets to fly up to October 31, 2023, allowing changes or cancellations without having to pay penalties.
Emirates operates three daily flights between Dubai and Tel Aviv with Boeing 777-300ER aircraft, and two daily flights between Dubai and Amman, one with a Boeing 777-300ER and another with an Airbus A380.
