Congressman Ritchie Torres has attacked the CEOs of United, Delta, and American for ‘effectively boycotting Israel’ with their flight suspensions, noting that the U.S. government has not concluded these flights are unsafe to operate and that El Al continues to fly.
United and Delta have suspended operations to Israel. American hasn’t ever resumed flying since October 7th, and keeps pushing back the date of planned return. There’s no particular reason to think they’ll be flying to Israel in April 2025.
I am calling upon the CEOs of American Airlines, Delta, and United to end the unilateral + indefinite suspensions of air travel to Israel. The operative words here are ‘unilateral’ and ‘indefinite.’
Air travel suspensions should have time limits and FAA approval. Instead of… pic.twitter.com/J1uhKGg98k
— Ritchie Torres (@RitchieTorres) August 29, 2024
Several readers sent this to me suggesting comment, but it seemed self-evidently wrong and I didn’t mention it. Both Live and Let’s Fly and One Mile at a Time have offered comment, which I mostly agree with, except for two important items. The first is factual, and the second is I think they fail to land the major policy criticism correctly here.
- U.S. airlines may be able to operate, but the start-and-stop nature of the flying is a real challenge. And the security situation in Israel affects demand as well. There have been plenty of traffic looking to leave Israel, and looking to go home, but while the economy of Israel has certainly improved since the immediate aftermath of October 7th business travel remains substantially impaired.
- The airlines have to make their own judgments, not just about the absolute security situation and not only ‘flying unless government tells them not to’ but also considering the effect it has on employees – and what the downside would be if something untoward happened. (They also have to deal with some pro-Hamas employees and union leaders who would accelerate the situation.)
- U.S. airlines have alternative places to send crew and aircraft. Even if Israel may be safe to fly to, and even if there was sufficient premium demand to justify it, Israel isn’t enough better than the next best place to deploy the aircraft to justify the downside right now.
- El Al has a completely different calculus. They are flying both as a business and as the national airline. They can’t just redeploy their fleet away from Tel Aviv, the way that Air France moved its fleet to Morocco when Germany invaded during World War II. (That’s why an Air France plane takes Ilsa Lund and Victor Laszlo from Casablanca to Lisbon at the end of Casablanca.)
And U.S. consumers not only have El Al as an option, but the joint ventures that U.S. airlines participate in as well as other carriers entirely. In other words, passengers can connect in Europe and even the Mideast outside of shorter periods of suspension.
However, there are two areas where I part company with both Matthew Klint and Ben Schlappig on this issue.
- Both sites repeat a common misconception that El Al aircraft have anti-missile defense systems. In fact, the airline’s 737s and 777s came equipped with the E-MUSIC anti-missile systems while their 787s did not.
- And both, in my opinion, miss the obvious criticism – is that Congressman Torres shouldn’t be calling out U.S. airline CEOs he should be working to encourage fifth freedom flights between the U.S. and Israel by non-U.S. carriers. If U.S. airlines aren’t going to serve Israel, why shouldn’t others?
Open Skies treaties differ in their language, and do not all already accommodate this. Israel may need to be encouraged to allow it (versus protectionism favoring El Al). But this seems the easy solution. And if none can be found to do so, once so encouraged, that’s another form of answer to the criticism.
Congressman Torres is simply grandstanding. You don’t lose points blasting airline CEOs. Any serious policy proposal would involve bringing in other airlines to do the job. End the protectionism for U.S. carriers – there’s no excuse for it anyway, but even less so when they’ve stopped flying a route.
I agree with the author entirely. He is inexperienced at grandstanding so it seems really obvious. (I’m v glad young ppl are in congress. There should be more.)
This is probably an insurance issue where the insurers have said that you have no coverage if you lose an aircraft due to the war events going on.
El Al also has higher risk management standards due to the standard increased diligence in which they operate. AA UA DL are there for profit entirely. EL AL is for profit but has a specific mission.
Another point is that if an El Al plane is shot down, the whole weight of the IDF will crush the enemy like a ton of bricks. In contrast, if a Delta plane is shot down, the US Army and US Marines will not occupy Lebanon or Gaza.
Airlines operate like a cream puff (which is sort of ok). When the crews time out, they stop working. If they can’t work because of that, they aren’t going to work when missiles are firing or at risk to being fired.
You did fine until point 2 at the bottom, Gary.
what airlines do you think are going to operate 5th freedom routes between the US and Israel only to forsake the market when US carriers return and Israeli carrier(s) increase service?
Service will return when the war situation is resolved. No other carriers besides LY have an incentive right now to fly to TLV vs. other alternatives.
You left out a 3rd point which is supply-and-demand. Before Oct 7 planes were overflowing with high fare passengers and US carriers kept adding new routes. But tourism to Israel has cratered in the past year, for obvious reasons. Nobody – except a few zealots and family – wants to visit a war zone. It is similar to how travel cratered during the pandemic.
That said El Al is making a killing and its fares have been criticized inside Israel. So there is probably space for competitors – just not many.
@Tim Dunn – I think you miss the point here on #2
1. Unwillingness to serve the route is the point, as I write, it shows that there’s not a market there for the taking and that the carriers are acting reasonably
2. But it wouldn’t be to simply foresake the market when US carriers return. My point is that 5th freedom flying should be allowed, period, just as Singapore today can fly New York – Frankfurt, LA – Tokyo, and (ending) Houston – Manchester and Emirates can fly New York to Milan and Athens. There are still gate and slot constraints in some airports, but we should both relax foreign ownership restrictions on U.S. carriers and allow foreign carriers to fly from the U.S. to foreign points and within the U.S. as well. No more protectionism.
“They also have to deal with some pro-Hamas employees”
You basically just admitted they are indeed willfully boycotting Israel to placate pro-Hamas employees. What you missed is they are also boycotting Israel to placate the pro-Hamas Biden-Harris administration.
Prices are high, which means the demand is there, so your nonsensical hand waving about airlines making commercial decisions rings hollow.
Personally, I would feel safer traveling to Israel than to western europe, where you get jailed for posting wrongthink online, or not caving to censorship demands.
Safety comes first. I understand not flying to Tel Aviv when rockets are in the air. On the other hand, letting FA’s express political bias with Palestinian (or any) flags I think is wrong. Keep politics and personal preferences (like pronouns) out of the work place and in your personal lives where we welcome you to do whatever weird garbage you want to do so long as it doesn’t hurt others.
“we should allow foreign carriers to fly from the U.S. to foreign points and within the U.S. as well.”
Where do you draw the line? Do we just let Shandong Airlines fly a new route from St. Louis to New Orleans?
Why should they fly there?
They have their reasons why they don’t do it at the moment and whatever reason they have, might it be for safety, money, possible conflicts with crew or anything else is fine.
US Airlines have absolutely zero to do with Israel and owe the country nothing. To mention that El Al is flying to / from Israel is more than ridiculous. Where else should they be flying if not there?
If they are not flying there they are not flying at all. Non-Israel based Airlines are just loosing one destination and can compensate that with other destinations.
@Mike – “Where do you draw the line?” foreign airlines must pass the same safety standards as US carriers
Torres is from possibly the poorest district in the USA. Money could be tied up with this. Follow the money.
Ricthie Torres voted to censure Rashida Talib as did 22 other democrats. All 22, including Ritchie Torres have AIPAC as their largest donor. Of course they are gonna shill for Israel. They put Israel’s interests above their own country”s
@jerry – Rashida Talib is a piece of garbage that should be thrown out of office -Censuring was too good for her – Supporting Israel is putting the US interests first – Saving the US from becoming like Europe – Becoming a Sharia state with no Western identity – Walk around any European city and you see it – Paris, London they’ve pretty much been overtaken/invaded and destroyed- That’s exactly what Talib hopes for
@jab. That’s such a white suoremacist statement. “Get rid of the brown people in Europe” is basically what you just said.
So perhaps you would acknowledge The Israeli settlers invading the west bank and the terror they continue to inflict on Palestinian civilians. They burned the town of Jit in the West Bank to the ground.
More Palestinians have been forcibly removed from their homes this year that in the last 30 years.
As for our “ally”, our politicians are controlled by The Israel lobby. They wouldn’t care a lick about Israel if the money stopped flowing.