El Al Israel Airlines Ltd. (TASE: ELAL) is finding increasingly difficult to come up with a sustainable solution for Sabbath operations. Arkia Airlines Ltd. today confirmed to "Globes" that it has notified El Al that, beginning on May 1, it will stop leasing services to El Al. This means that, after a month's operations, El Al will no longer be able to operate Saturday flights using an Arkia code.
Sources at Israir Airlines and Tourism Ltd. also confirmed that it was leaning toward terminating its leasing agreement with El Al, but declined to make an official statement on the matter.
Since El Al's charter subsidiary Sun D'Or International Airlines had its license revoked on April 1, El Al operated weekday charter flights under its own code, and Saturday and holiday flights under an Arkia or Israir code. In effect, El Al planes and crews were flying as a different Israeli airline. In this way, El Al sought to bypass the grounding of its planes on the Sabbath and holidays without enraging Israel's religious communities or to publicly declare that the national carrier would violate the Sabbath.
"We gave El Al several weeks to organize itself and fly with our code, but we have the feeling that they're trying to trick everybody at the expense of the other airlines," a senior executive at an Israeli charter airline told "Globes". "It's unacceptable that this trick should become a permanent solution that will hurt us. They have to decide what they want to do. This cannot go on."
The decision by Israel's charter airlines not to let El Al use their codes for Saturday and holiday flights could force El Al to decide between grounding its fleet on the Sabbath and losing substantial revenue, or flying on the Sabbath and losing haredi (ultra-orthodox) patronage. In the wake of the loss of Sun D'Or's license, El Al has said that it will continue its policy of no Sabbath flights, partly in response to threats of haredi boycotts.
El Al has not yet responded to the report.
Published by Globes [online], Israel business news - www.globes-online.com - on April 26, 2011
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