The surprise attacks on Israel over the weekend caused much loss of life. It also threw the operations of airlines in the region in jeopardy. Israel sees significant operations from the American carriers and has a flight by Air India between Delhi and Tel Aviv.

Air India brings back crew from Israel, with help from Ethiopian Airlines.

Air India launched flights to Israel back in 2018, and at the time, it was a win for diplomacy as well, with Air India getting special permission to fly over Saudi Arabia to reach Israel. The airline has a 4x weekly operation to Tel Aviv with the Boeing 787-8 aircraft. The airline, of course, found itself in a situation where it was caught by surprise. While Air India was supposed to operate a flight to Tel Aviv (AI139) on October 7, 2023, with the news of the attacks, the flight was cancelled.

However, Air India had the crew on a layover in Tel Aviv, those who would have operated the return leg (AI140), and this crew, apart from the station manager for Tel Aviv, had to be evacuated from Israel at the earliest. Luckily, the Ben Gurion Airport (TLV) is functioning so far, and the airline swung into action to extract the crew. The airline put them on Ethiopian Airlines and flew them back to India.

Campbell Wilson communicated this to the Air India organisation in an internal memo,

Hi everyone.

For anyone who is wondering (or worrying), our crew who were laying over in TLV are now safely enroute home. Thank you to everyone in OPS and HR who enabled this so efficiently, and to the operating crew for their calm professionalism.

Our thoughts are with all those affected by this conflict and with our local business partners. We hope that peace will be restored soon.

Campbell

Air India has since declared that it is cancelling flight operations to Israel until October 14, 2023. As per a statement issued by the airline,

Our flights to and from Tel Aviv will remain suspended till 14th October, 2023, for the safety of our passengers and crew. Air India will extend all possible support to passengers who have confirmed bookings on any flight during this period.

US Carriers cancel flights to and from Israel evacuate staff as well.

In the meantime, flights from the US operating to Tel Aviv turned around mid-flight and returned to base. For instance, this is UA954, which was working SFO-TLV on October 6, 2023, which turned around when flying over Greenland and returned to San Francisco.

All the US carriers reacted similarly and extracted their crew and non-revving passengers from Israel. They operated extra flights out of Tel Aviv without commercial passengers on board. For instance, this is Delta’s operation out of TLV. United and American ran flights similarly.

All the US carriers have also temporarily halted flights to/from Tel Aviv. A glance at Tel Aviv Airport on FlightRadar24 indicates that only flights operated by El Al (the Israeli airline) and some Turkish and other Middle-Eastern airlines are largely operating into TLV at the moment, with other airlines cancelling their flights into Tel Aviv for the foreseeable future.

Bottomline

It is heartbreaking to see another geopolitical conflict break out, and our thoughts are with everyone affected by this war. Airlines will, no doubt, have to see how they progress, but at least, so far, they have erred on the side of caution and withdrawn their people and operations from Tel Aviv. Flights are also cancelled for the foreseeable future by most airlines.

What do you make out of the effect of this conflict on aviation?

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