EL-AL From Israel, joined Oct 2001, 1132 posts, RR: 5 Posted (3 years 5 months 2 weeks 4 days 13 hours ago) and read 2294 times:
After 54 years of flying, Olympic Air stopped its ATH-TLV-ATH route on jan 1st 2010. OA will be replace by Aegean Airlines, that will fly 7 times to Tel Aviv, using A320, that will land on 1305 and depart of 1355 Israel time.
Olympic Airways started flying to Israel in 1956, and it flew that line nonstop (except for war times in 1967, 1973 & 1991) till now. In the last 15 years or so it flew to TLV once a day. Many airplanes flew on this line, including the Comet, B727-200, B737-200, B737-400 & A300B4 (in the summer of some years). After the airline was privatized last year it still flew to Israel (flight OP301/302) every day, with A319/A320.
I flew OA to ATH and back myself last time on April 2007, with SX-BKB (B734) both ways. OA offered very good prices from Israel to Europe, usually way cheaper then El Al.
Olympic Air's CEO in Israel, Itzik Tzadikrio, says that the airline wish to re-open the TLV route in the future, and therefore Olympic addressed the Israeli Ministry of Transportation to allow one extra airline from Israel and one more from Greece to fly on that route, instead of 1 airline from every country, as the agreement between the 2 countries allow today.
Icna05e From France, joined Feb 2006, 289 posts, RR: 0 Reply 1, posted (3 years 5 months 2 weeks 3 days 8 hours ago) and read 1796 times:
So, no open skies between Israel and Europe yet? I took that one for granted. Why would OA axe TLV after so long and just temporarily, if by doing so they leave all the market to the competition? Have they been asked to give the frequencies away to Aegean? I am really puzzled here.
funny that they don't have any route any more to Israel but still have an Israel CEO!