When Michael Rosen made the decision to move to Israel with his family from San Diego a decade ago, he knew that frequent travel back to the United States was the only way to make it work. As an attorney, he’d need to to appear in court and meet with clients in the U.S. — onerous, but necessary to pay the bills in Israel.
For several years, his monthly trips stateside were not a big deal; even when last-minute business came up, he never had trouble buying a ticket for just a couple days later, usually on Delta. But since the Oct. 7 Hamas terror attacks and ensuing war, travel to Israel from the U.S. (and vice versa) has become a headache, for everyone from frequent fliers to first-time visitors.
For all but two brief periods in 2024, the major U.S. carriers — Delta, United and American — have not flown to Tel Aviv since the war broke out, citing security concerns. El Al, now passengers’ only option for direct flights to and from America, doesn’t have enough planes to meet travelers’ demand, leading to crushingly high prices and flights that are often sold out weeks or months in advance.
Some European airlines have recently resumed flights to Israel after Israel reached a cease-fire deal with Lebanon, while several Gulf airlines have been flying to Israel throughout the conflict, including the United Arab Emirates-based Etihad Airways, which is now operating three daily flights to Tel Aviv. But those realities have not swayed U.S. airline executives.
At a meeting of United’s board of directors in early December, United Airlines CEO Scott Kirby said he has “no interest in returning to Tel Aviv only to pull out for a third time,” according to a source with knowledge of the conversation. United has also not resumed service to Amman, where it flew during the first several months of the war but suspended service in August.
“One of the things that Iran is trying to accomplish is to isolate Israel economically. This is just another sign of that,” Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) told JI in April.
In March 2024, United became the first U.S. airline to resume flights to Tel Aviv, but stopped them weeks later after Iran fired hundreds of missiles and drones at Israel. In June, all three U.S. carriers began operating flights to Tel Aviv again — and all three suspended them by August, amid an escalation in fighting between Israel and the terrorist group Hezbollah in Lebanon. Delta said its flights to Israel would be canceled until the end of March 2025, and American said it won’t resume service until September 2025. United flights are canceled until further notice.
The U.S. airlines may not see themselves as part of the broader messaging war over Israel, nor are they likely to care that decisions affecting a fraction of their overall flights could have a big impact on tiny Israel. But the choice to suspend service to a country whose war against an Islamist terror group has coincided with a global rise in antisemitism and calls to boycott the Jewish state is seen by some as a de facto boycott, regardless of airline executives’ intentions.
“One of the things that Iran is trying to accomplish is to isolate Israel economically. This is just another sign of that,” Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) told JI in April.
The U.S. airlines’ decision to maintain the pause on service to Tel Aviv has drawn high-profile critics from across the ideological spectrum. Tom Nides, who served as U.S. ambassador to Israel during the Biden administration, said the airlines need to “figure this out.”
“As a former ambassador, I want as many people as possible to go to Israel. For the economy, for life, for a country that has the same values that we do, I want them to go back,” Nides told JI this month. “Not only do I want Jews to go back — I want Americans. I want Arabs. I want everyone to start going back.”
Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) called for a congressional investigation into the matter and questioned whether the continued cancellation of flights to Tel Aviv amounts to “politically motivated boycotts of Israel.” In a statement to JI this month, Cruz cited allegations of “antisemitic discrimination by airlines” and “calls by unions not to fly to Israel [that] were motivated solely by pro-Hamas activists.” Rep. Ritchie Torres (D-NY) said in August that the airlines are “effectively boycotting” Israel by not flying there.
Travelers who are not deterred by the lack of options have taken to cobbling together their own inconvenient itineraries, first on other airlines with one, two or even three stops in the U.S. and Europe, before transferring to an Israeli carrier for the final leg of their journey.
“It’s still the same people competing for the same very limited number of seats on El Al. The only solution is for these American carriers to start flying back to Israel,” Michael Rosen said. “It’s very harmful to the Israeli economy to have to continue as things are in the status quo.”
Rosen spoke to Jewish Insider in early December in the middle of a 10-hour layover in Athens, where he planned to board a flight on the Israeli budget airline Arkia back to Tel Aviv, after getting from Washington to New York and then flying from New York to Athens on Delta.
“It’s a real pain, and it’s not all that cheap either. They understand how the market works,” Rosen said of Arkia. Now, he makes the trip less frequently and spends longer in the U.S. on each visit to avoid the logistical difficulties of booking travel that until just over a year ago was a fairly seamless process.
“It’s still the same people competing for the same very limited number of seats on El Al. The only solution is for these American carriers to start flying back to Israel,” Rosen explained. “It’s very harmful to the Israeli economy to have to continue as things are in the status quo.”
It’s hard to quantify exactly what impact the limited flight options have had on Israel’s economy, particularly since tourism to Israel is already significantly deflated because of the ongoing war. But it’s clear that the decision by the three major U.S. carriers to suspend their routes to Tel Aviv has led many people who do want to come to Israel to stay away.
“It really, really inhibits the ability to sell Israel and to bring people here,” said Lisa Moed, director of sales and marketing for Eshet Incoming, an Israeli travel company. Moed has seen people who sorely want to come to Israel postpone or cancel their trips because of the cost and uncertainty. (El Al has said the perception of fare hikes is exaggerated, but they no longer face competition that may have had lower prices.) The limited number of flight options has also made it difficult to obtain group bookings on flights.
“We have a Christian group that wanted to come in February, and they couldn’t get a contract for the dates that they wanted, so they decided to push it off until next fall,” said Moed.
The dramatic reduction in flights has also impacted Israel’s high-tech sector, which relies on international travel for entrepreneurs to grow their businesses. El Al announced this month that it would reserve 15-20 seats on flights to New York, London and Paris for tech executives who may not be able to plan trips far in advance.
Several Israeli tech CEOs and investors are hoping to launch a direct daily flight between Tel Aviv and New York later this month on a new airline called TechAir, but they need a certain number of people to buy seats before the service begins — so it is still not guaranteed.
“Israeli founders think about the global market from the very beginning. They don’t think about the Israeli market at all,” said Kobi Eisenberg, co-founder and CEO of Autofleet, an Israeli startup. “Travel is something that is key to how we do business, and the effects of the international airlines, including the U.S. airlines, not traveling has its toll.”
Autofleet was acquired by a Canadian company earlier this year, and while the war didn’t impact Autofleet’s prospects, working out the deal was made more difficult due to the travel disturbances. Eisenberg was pleasantly surprised when executives from the larger company, Element Fleet Management, still flew to Israel in July days after a Houthi drone exploded in Tel Aviv, killing one person. But at that time, American carriers were still operating flights to Tel Aviv.
The matter has become water-cooler fodder at El Al airport lounges among people who are most affected by the flight shortages, particularly those who would prefer to stick with United or American to maintain their airline status, which Delta travelers can do through a code-share agreement with El Al. (United appears to value those frequent fliers: Some United customers who used to travel to Israel frequently prior to Oct. 7 received an email from the airline this month informing them that their Premier Platinum status would be extended for a year because the suspension of Tel Aviv flights “may have disrupted your travel plans.”)
“When you think about the Iron Dome and all these things, yes, it’s really good. But it was just a few weeks ago where a rocket landed in one of the parking lots outside of Ben Gurion [Airport],” said Zach Griff, a senior reporter at The Points Guy, a news site focused on the travel industry. “I do think that what it will ultimately require for the airlines to get back is just a sustained period of quiet.”
Cruz’s accusation that the airlines’ choice not to fly to Tel Aviv is rooted in anti-Israel politics, or, worse, antisemitism has become almost gospel among many travelers. They see that there is an unmet demand and question why the airlines, which are businesses seeking to turn a profit, don’t simply step up and offer the flights that were once big money-makers for them.
“The folks in the commercial organization [at U.S. airlines] are bummed that they’re not flying to Israel. Israel is an incredibly profitable destination, especially among United and Delta, who’ve been so successful there over the years,” said Zach Griff, a senior reporter at The Points Guy, a news site focused on the travel industry. He traveled to Israel over the summer on United.
But Griff cautioned that demand isn’t the only factor airlines are taking into account.
“When you think about the Iron Dome and all these things, yes, it’s really good. But it was just a few weeks ago where a rocket landed in one of the parking lots outside of Ben Gurion [Airport],” Griff said, referring to a Hezbollah missile that landed in an empty lot at the airport in November. “I do think that what it will ultimately require for the airlines to get back is just a sustained period of quiet.” Spokespeople for Delta, United and American declined to share more information about why those airlines are not traveling to Tel Aviv.
There’s also a flip side to the argument that resuming service to Tel Aviv will be a financial boon for airlines. When they made the split-second decision to pause flights to Tel Aviv last April and again in the summer, the airlines had to handle the logistics of bringing crews stranded in the Middle East back home, which disrupted their global flight schedules — in addition to re-tooling where those now-empty planes would go, since multiple large aircraft would no longer be flying on the planned Tel Aviv route.
“They obviously will lose the revenue they were planning to get from those flights. In all likelihood, their capacity will be idle, and they will lose money,” said Clifford Winston, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution who studies the aviation industry. “What airlines want to do is have their planes in the air, ideally 24/7, doing something, earning money for them. The worst thing for them is if a flight is on the ground.”
Still, at a time when hostility toward Israel has crept into so many spheres in American life, it’s natural to wonder whether a similar sentiment has reached U.S. airlines. The flight attendants union signed onto a Nov. 2023 letter demanding a cease-fire in Gaza, and is now a member of the National Labor Network for Ceasefire, which has called for an end to U.S. military aid to Israel. This political advocacy has prompted questions about whether American flight attendants are refusing to fly to Israel for political reasons. (A spokesperson for the Association of Flight Attendants did not respond to requests for comment.)
“I think that was also part of the risk analysis was ‘We cannot be totally sure that these 20 American pilots and flight attendants that we’re dropping in Tel Aviv for two days on their layover — we can’t be confident that they will be totally out of harm’s way,’” a source at United Airlines said.
Aviation experts say the most likely explanation might be the most boring — that the airlines are cautious about flying into a country where 2 million people in cities near the airport still face rocket alerts warning them to take shelter. In late December, the Houthis fired several ballistic missiles toward central Israel over a period of a week and a half, causing Israelis to run to bomb shelters even as the missiles were intercepted by the Israeli military.
When United resumed its service to Tel Aviv in early 2024, the airline created a security guide to provide to crew members working the Tel Aviv route, a copy of which was obtained by JI. The airline has similar briefing guides for Amman and several African nations to alert pilots and flight attendants about how to prepare for possible security threats.
The document outlines, in great detail, what might await United crews during wartime — with specific plans on what to do if air raid sirens go off during crew members’ transit to their hotel in Tel Aviv and how to reach the safe room at the hotel, as well as warnings about terrorism and civil unrest.
“These documents, unfortunately, are written to the lowest common denominator,” a source at United said, pointing out that most crew members working the Tel Aviv route won’t have the same situational awareness of the security situation in Israel as people with more knowledge of the region. “I think that was also part of the risk analysis was ‘We cannot be totally sure that these 20 American pilots and flight attendants that we’re dropping in Tel Aviv for two days on their layover — we can’t be confident that they will be totally out of harm’s way.’”
Regular travelers to Israel understand that Tel Aviv is generally safe during wartime, even with occasional rocket alerts. But reading the document, which outlines military incidents that have affected the airport over the years, could be jarring to someone with no ties to the region.
In 2014, during a previous war between Israel and Hamas, the Federal Aviation Administration halted all U.S. flights to Israel for a brief period after a rocket landed a mile from the airport. This time, the FAA has issued no such guidance for U.S. airlines, which critics point to as evidence that there is no increased risk for the American carriers to travel to Tel Aviv. “The FAA has not instructed airlines to suspend flights to Israel. The airlines make their own independent decisions related to flight schedules,” an FAA spokesperson told JI.
Airlines, however, are generally more cautious than the FAA, which provides daily guidance to airlines in conjunction with the State Department and Department of Homeland Security but only rarely takes strong positions like it did in 2014. Instead, the airlines look to incidents like the Malaysia Airlines flight shot down by Russia over Ukraine in 2014 as a guide.
“That has made the airlines much more risk averse than at any point in time,” said Michael McCormick, a former air traffic controller and senior FAA official who is now a professor at Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University. In December, Azerbaijan’s leader accused Russia of shooting down an Azerbaijan Airlines flight that crashed in Kazakhstan, killing 38 people.
Still, some foreign airlines are flying to Israel — including from the Gulf, where carriers based in countries with which Israel did not even have diplomatic relations until four years ago are still regularly flying in and out of Tel Aviv. Flydubai is operating eight daily flights from Dubai to Tel Aviv in January, and Etihad is operating three.
“It’s a self-fulfilling prophecy, because the less airlines are available, the less people go, and there’s less tourism,” said Tom Nides, former ambassador to Israel.
“They have shorter flights, so the crews and plane can go in and out without needing to overnight in Tel Aviv,” Griff said. “Their risk calculus is also different. Look at some of the other destinations that they serve.”
Flydubai, for instance, also flies to Iran — a destination American carriers would never touch. It also services Beirut, which no U.S. airlines have flown to in recent memory, even after the recent Israel-Lebanon cease-fire.
For many people, particularly those who might need to travel to Israel on business but do not follow the day-to-day developments of the war in Gaza, flight schedules double as a barometer for where it’s safe to travel — even if that’s missing the full picture.
“It’s a self-fulfilling prophecy, because the less airlines are available, the less people go, and there’s less tourism,” said Nides.
Avi Hasson, a former investor in tech companies who now leads Startup Nation Central, views his job as selling Israel’s thriving tech sector to global investors, making him well suited to gauge how foreign businesses’ view of Israel has shifted since Oct. 7. A corporate executive told him recently that their company’s board of directors looked at the limited flights to Israel and decided that must mean it isn’t safe to go.
“If that airline isn’t flying to Israel, then we shouldn’t go there,” Hasson quoted the executive as saying, while declining to name the airline.
“That’s safety. That’s not ideology. It’s not about anti-Israel sentiment. It’s simply the perception of risk, and it is not good for business,” said Hasson.
Whether the airlines’ reasoning is political or not, the outcome is the same: “It’s hurting Israel,” Nides, the former ambassador to Israel, said. “We’ve got to get these flights back.”