Emirates Flights To Tel Aviv, Israel, Launch June 23

After a major delay, Emirates has finally announced a new launch date for its flight to Israel. The service should launch this summer, and tickets are now on sale.

Details of Emirates’ new route to Tel Aviv, Israel

Emirates will launch a new route between Dubai (DXB) and Tel Aviv (TLV) as of June 23, 2022. The airline will operate the route daily with the following schedule:

EK931 Dubai to Tel Aviv departing 3:50PM arriving 6:00PM
EK932 Tel Aviv to Dubai departing 7:55PM arriving 11:59PM

The flight will cover a distance of 1,326 miles, and is blocked at 3hr10min westbound and 3hr4min eastbound. Flights between the United Arab Emirates and Israel are now allowed to use airspace of Saudi Arabia and Bahrain, significantly cutting down travel time compared to the circuitous routing that used to be needed when flying to & from Israel.

Emirates will use a three cabin Boeing 777-300ER for the route, featuring 354 seats, including eight first class seats, 42 business class seats, and 304 economy class seats.

This new route is already on sale. This flight was initially supposed to launch in late 2021, but then Israel closed its borders due to the omicron variant, meaning there wouldn’t be much demand for this flight. Israel’s borders are now largely open, so here’s to hoping that there’s not another wave by June that shuts down the country again.

Overall service between the UAE & Israel

For context, in August 2020 there was an exciting update to diplomacy in the Middle East, as we saw the normalization of relations between Israel and the United Arab Emirates. Part of this new cooperation involves an air service agreement, which allows for commercial flights. We’ve seen a huge number of flights already launched between the two countries, including on EL AL, Etihad, and FlyDubai, among others.

There had been a lot of speculation about whether or not Emirates would launch nonstop flights between Dubai and Tel Aviv. The reason for the speculation is that FlyDubai operates several daily frequencies between the two airports, and the airline is also owned by the government of Dubai.

The two airlines cooperate closely, and there aren’t many markets that are served by both FlyDubai and Emirates. However, Tel Aviv will be an exception. Clearly Emirates sees sufficient demand to add even more capacity to the route. At least as of now, it doesn’t look like FlyDubai will be cutting back frequencies in the market when Emirates enters.

Emirates has a kosher catering facility in Dubai

While this goes back a while, I think it’s still a cool thing to highlight, given that this route is finally happening. In September 2020 it was announced that Emirates Flight Catering would launch Kosher Arabia, a dedicated kosher food production facility at the company’s facility in the UAE.

This is the first catering facility in the UAE to become a registered and certified producer of kosher food. While Emirates Flight Catering previously offered kosher meals, this was done via an outsourced supplier. That has now been brought in-house, with production having started earlier this year.

So for those who order kosher meals when flying, you can expect some high quality food on Emirates.

Bottom line

Emirates will finally be launching flights to Tel Aviv, Israel, as of June 2022. The airline will initially operate a once daily flight with a Boeing 777. We’ve known for quite a while that the airline intended to add this route, and I’m happy to see this finally happening. Here’s to hoping that this timeline actually sticks.

It’s incredible to see how much new air service Israel has seen in the past 18 months, in light of relations improving with nearby countries.

What do you make of Emirates’ new route to Israel?