Since August 2010 EL AL has been operating three daily flights to Israel’s southernmost resort city. As of 21st April 2013 the airline will market 21 weekly flights to Eilat instead of the 17 flights in operation today.
The added flights link up to additional international EL AL flights on the Barcelona, Marseilles, London Luton routes and the flagship LY324 flight from Paris, which until today did not link up with Eilat flights.
EL AL is permitted to operate up to four daily frequencies on the Eilat route, a total of up to 580 seats a day. Due to the limitation on the number of seats and in light of the fact that EL AL’s B737 aircraft have 189 seats, the additional flights will be operated on Israir ATR72 planes, with 72 seats, on a wet lease basis.
Today EL AL operates three daily flights to Eilat – morning, noon and evening – one flight on Friday and another one on Saturday night.
The added flights will operate on Sunday, Monday, Wednesday and Thursday at 22.05 from Ben Gurion Airport and on Monday, Tuesday, Thursday and Friday early in the morning from Eilat.
EL AL Vice President Commercial and Industry Affairs David Maimon said: “EL AL flights to Eilat have created a significant advantage for incoming tourism, due to the link-ups with incoming and outgoing flights to/from EL AL’s worldwide destinations. This is in line with EL AL’s strategy based on significantly increasing incoming tourism to the city and offering a wide variety of flight possibilities to residents of Eilat and the south. Increasing the number of scheduled flights between Tel Aviv and Eilat is expected to increase both international and domestic tourism to Eilat.”
