Virgin Atlantic is officially discontinuing service to Israel, not that it has operated in quite some time, anyway (thanks to Neil for flagging this)…
Continue reading: Virgin Atlantic Cancels Tel Aviv Flights, Permanently
Share your questions, experiences, and thoughts below.
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.
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.
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.
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)
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 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.
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
You should consider your words carefully, unless you want to risk a defamation lawsuit. Accusing someone of being a "notorious alcoholic" is defamatory.
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.
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.
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!
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.
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.
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).
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.
They did not want stinking Beards to ruin their seats and have them sue every day.
Tel Aviv never made money for VS.
But Shai Weiss let his personal bias, such as being an IDF tank commander committing genocide against the Palestinian people in the past, influence business decisions.
Shame on Shai and shame on VS for ever flying to an apartheid state to begin with.
Very true Yolo. Interline to the subcontinent was always huge, both India and Pakistan. Kenya also a surprisingly big interline market ex-US.
Low cost carrier Wizz Air has been serving TLV from Europe with regular flights throughout most of the time since October 2023. Not sure how Wizz’s TLV schedule compares now compared to April 2023, but it’s an LCC and I found its prices for TLV flights to be reasonable enough … although I pay to avoid Wizz.
The basis for a defamation claim to have legal merit varies by jurisdiction. In some jurisdictions, a claim need not be false for the defamation claim to succeed in a civil suit or even criminal trial.
Turkish Airlines and Turkey’s LCC Pegasus airline seem to be surrendering or losing all their slots at TLV. TK has been flying to TLV for something like all but 3 or 4 months during the last 4 years or so.
Before October 2023, they had often been flying 10-16 DAILY flights to TLV.