Virgin Atlantic is officially discontinuing service to Israel, not that it has operated in quite some time, anyway (thanks to Neil for flagging this)…
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Virgin Atlantic cuts London to Tel Aviv route
Virgin Atlantic has announced that it’s permanently canceling its route between London (LHR) and Tel Aviv (TLV). The airline first launched this service in late 2019, with once daily flights. Aside from a pause during the start of the pandemic, the airline operated this service through October 2023, and even increased frequencies to twice daily.
Virgin Atlantic exclusively flies wide body jets, and doesn’t have any short haul flights. At 2,233 miles, this was by far Virgin Atlantic’s shortest route.
Up until now, the plan was for Virgin Atlantic to resume the route as of the start of the IATA 2025-2026 winter schedule, which kicks in as of late October 2025. However, after a “thorough review,” the airline has decided to no longer bring back this service. So it’d being cut permanently, or at least as permanent as anything in this industry is.
Why Virgin Atlantic is cutting Israel flights permanently
So, why is Virgin Atlantic canceling its Israel service? It comes down to a combination of the carrier’s small fleet and a focus on higher growth routes. In other words, the airline thinks it can make more money flying aircraft elsewhere.
Of course since October 2023, the issue has been being able to reliably operate this service, given the war, and the impact it has had on airline operations. Only EL AL has been operating flights to and from Israel consistently, due to some unique features of the carrier.
So it’s not clear to what extent this decision is driven by the uncertainty with flying to Israel, rather than the profitability of the route, if it actually can operate.
I think there’s one other major consideration here. Keep in mind that Delta owns a 49% stake in Virgin Atlantic. When Virgin Atlantic first launched Tel Aviv flights, they were timed for US connections, so the idea was to create all kinds of one-stop routings between US cities and Tel Aviv.
However, in late 2023, Delta and EL AL launched a strategic partnership, and I suspect the plan is to continue to grow that over time. With Delta partnering with EL AL, Virgin Atlantic’s route from London to Tel Aviv isn’t as important. For that matter, in mid-2024, Virgin Atlantic and EL AL also launched a partnership, including a codeshare agreement.
Bottom line
Virgin Atlantic was supposed to resume Tel Aviv flights as of October 2025, but that will no longer happen. The airline has made the decision to cancel this service, after a review of its network, as clearly it views other destinations as being higher priority.
I have to imagine that both Delta and Virgin Atlantic partnering with EL AL plays into this, as the need to route Israel-bound passengers through London on Virgin Atlantic isn’t as much of a strategic priority as it was pre-pandemic.
What do you make of Virgin Atlantic cutting Tel Aviv flights?
So a private airline can't decide what routes it wants to fly?
Anti-semitism.
No one cancels Israel and gets away with it.
Reallocating the planes for Seoul, in all likelihood
What's interesting here is that this cuts off a connecting point for Delta passengers to get to Israel
Not sure if the plan is going to be for Air France and KLM to increase service to Israel or something like that, but can't imagine Delta is thrilled with this
Or for EL AL to expand the number of flights sit has to key delta hubs.
Won't they just setup a codesharing agreement out of LHR to sell EL tickets via LHR?
I can already buy LHR connections from the US to TLV via VS. They just need to expand it to DL and I don't see this is a huge problem.
They probably will indeed expand the DL/VS/El codeshares as necessary, and El Al may also increase the number of Delta hubs it serves directly if needed (El Al has been expanding the number of US destinations served over the past several years so it's not a stretch to think they could add a couple more).
Other changes coming or rumoured to be on the VS W25 operations;
UVF St Lucia ( stopping confirmed )
ACC Accra ( not on sale for the proposed restart date )
JFK reducing from 5 to 4 daily ( no official news but only 4 on sale )
SEA reducing from daily to 4 per week ( no official news but only selling M/W/F/Sun)
The JFK/SEA is pretty negligible. Winter reductions are normal, Delta is anyways increasing their winter frequency to maintain service.
A lot of the winter shifts have to do w/ LHR slot utilization. VS will back to their full levels after winter.
VS have leased 14 slot pairs to Saudia and a further 6 to Kuwait for the S25 season both from JFK allocation, will be interesting to see if they are returned for the W25 period.
With TLV currently being an extremely high yield route, there must be more to the decision. I suppose the main issue may be the duty of care cost in situations where VS decides to not operate the route and has to pay very costly rebookings on other carriers (El Al, LOT, etc.), and often also quite a few hotel nights until a seat becomes available in the first place.
Exactly - There is no way this cancellation has anything to do with yields. And they will also be losing a significant feeder into their USA network (IME most pax on this route connected).
The US connectivity shouldn't really matter though anymore, as both El Al and Delta (on its own metal) operate multiple daily non-stops from the US to TLV.
For UK O&D, it probably makes more economic sense to just code share on El Al's flight from LHR as well as one-stop Air France/KLM itineraries via CDG/AMS since Virgin only operates widebodies.
VS is substantially an O/D carrier. This won’t affect US loads.
Rare exception is South Africa which generates good connectivity. Interline past LHR goes via many airlines…funny enough, mostly on BA. I used to look after the agreements, at least from the N Am side…
VS does do a lot of connections to India as well, especially as Delta is yet to resume their India flights, most of the Delta flyers are reliant on VS and the other TATL JV flights to connect to India.
Pretty surprising considering the CEO is Jewish.
the CEO of a major company being jewish does not mean that they're going to lose a bunch of money to symbolically support israel.
FNT Delta Diamond is a notorious alcoholic that cries when the price of the airport wine isn't up to their standards.
Ofc they will say delulu stuff like this.
You should consider your words carefully, unless you want to risk a defamation lawsuit. Accusing someone of being a "notorious alcoholic" is defamatory.
I'm a notorious alcoholic. Sipping on one right now.
How does being Jewish relate to the decision to halt flights to Israel? It is also highly defamatory to suggest that all Jews are connected with Israel.
Bro must be drunk on airport wine right now.
It's only defamation when it's untrue, and right now you are definitely not beating the allegations. Maybe after several years of attending AA meetings, you can get overcome though.
We're all rooting for you!