Northern residents can now fly to Eilat and Cyprus from a much closer international point of departure than Tel Aviv’s Ben-Gurion Airport.
Air Haifa is set to take off as the first new airline in Israel for 35 years.
It will operate from Haifa Airport in northern Israel – security concerns permitting – providing 3 million residents with a closer international point of departure than Tel Aviv’s Ben-Gurion Airport.
Air Haifa is scheduled to fly to Eilat, Israel’s Red Sea resort (starting October 13) and Larnaca, Cyprus (from October14).
Because of Israel’s war with Hezbollah on its northern border, Air Haifa’s inaugural services, two daily flights to Eilat – from September 30 to October 11 – departed from Ben-Gurion.
The company took delivery of its first aircraft – a 72-seat twin-engine turboprop ATR 72-600 — two months ago and received its second earlier this month.
Launching a new airline, the country’s first since Israir in 1989, during a war is certainly an unusual move.
But planning began 16 months ago, well before the Hamas massacre of October 7. It was licensed before liftoff by Israel’s Ministry of Transportation.
In a statement, the company indicated that the current security situation could restrict its activities to domestic rather than overseas flights.
“If I could have chosen between launching the airline in a regular business environment, I would definitely opt for that relatively to the current situation,” Michael Strassburger, the airline’s cofounder and executive vice president told ISRAEL21c.
“At the moment it’s not a secret that foreign airlines are very hesitant with their operations in Israel, although we are going to offer very marginal capacity in the beginning because we’re just at the startup stage of our operations.
“But it is an addition to the Israeli market, which is obviously good for the Israeli consumers.
“We definitely don’t have any sort of intentions to take advantage of the current situation.”
The starting price for a one-way flight from Haifa to Eilat is 139 shekels ($38) and to Cyprus 237 shekels ($64). Check-in is just an hour before take-off.
Haifa’s small airport was founded in 1934 as an RAF base under the British Mandate and has had no commercial flights since the Covid pandemic. It’s used for pilot training, helicopters, air ambulances and flights to drilling rigs.
“We’re planning to introduce more airplanes in the next 12 months. We’re aiming to operate four or five aircraft by year end 2025, allowing us to carry 600,000 passengers annually.
Air Haifa was founded by a group of Israeli entrepreneurs led by Nir Tzuk, founder of the cybersecurity firm Palo Alto Networks, together with Gonen Usishkin (former CEO at El Al), Lior Yavor (former chief pilot and head of operations at El Al) and Michael Strassburger (former chief commercial officer at El Al).
(Israel21c)
