Delta & United Planes Divert En Route To Tel Aviv

Intro

Last night, we saw an escalation in the Middle East as Israel launched pre-emptive strikes on Iran's nuclear sites. While I won't talk about the political angle in this post, this might be a tell-tale sign of what is to come for foreign airlines flying to Israel.

The Details

There are no two ways about this: the Israel-USA market is a highly lucrative and highly profitable market for airline, with United coming out and saying that before Covid, this was their money maker.

However, serving Israel at this time has proven to be a little bit of a challenge due to the ongoing conflict. Last night, we saw Delta and United both divert midway through their flights, returning all the way to New York (EWR, JFK).

This United flight had made it about 4 hours into its TATL crossing

Now, interestingly, both of these planes were heavily delayed before departing, and I have to wonder exactly why. UA84 was delayed by almost an hour, while DL284 was delayed a whopping 135 minutes. Sure, the Delta inbound landed late, but that is almost a 3.5-hour turnaround time before departure. Just something to note.

The Future Of Israel Flights

So, what does the future of flying to Israel look like? Well, for starters, I presume that no matter the circumstances, the flag carrier, El Al, will continue to fly due to heightened safety measures on their planes.

It's a complicated market, but highly lucrative.

However, for foreign airlines, I wouldn't be surprised if they took a break for a while. United and Delta have tried to get back into this market, and it barely lasted a week. Through the amount of refunds needed and the number of passengers needing to be re-accommodated, I see this halt coming for quite a bit of time in my eyes.

Final Thoughts

Delta and United have temporarily suspended flights after both having to divert over the Atlantic back to New York (Jersey) last night due to the escalation in the Middle East. With everything going on in the region, I wouldn't be surprised to see flight suspended for quite a bit longer.