VIRGIN ATLANTIC ANNOUNCES NEW CODESHARES AND RETURNS TO ISRAE
Virgin Atlantic has announced a trio of new codeshare partnerships to increase connectivity across its route network, as well as the return of its direct London to Tel Aviv services. The airline will return to Tel Aviv on September 5, 2024, for the first time since October 11, 2023. Flights will operate daily using the airline’s Airbus A330 fleet. The carrier originally began services from London-Heathrow (LHR) to Tel Aviv Ben Gurion Airport (TLV) in September 2019. Additionally, a new bilateral codeshare agreement with Israeli national carrier El Al has been announced to accompany the route re-launch. The two airlines will place codes on their respective London-Heathrow to Tel Aviv services, allowing customers from both carriers’ greater frequencies on the route with up to four daily flights.
Juha Jarvinen, Chief Commercial Officer, Virgin Atlantic said: “Our return to Tel Aviv on September 5, 2024, will be welcome news for customers who have enjoyed our service since 2019, and this time round it’ll be strengthened by our new codeshare partnership with EL AL”.
A DELEGATION OF PASTORS LED BY BISHOP ROBERT STEARNS STANDS IN SOLIDARITY WITH ISRAEL
In a meeting with Deputy Mayor Chen Arieli, they learned about the city’s handling of the state of emergency.
Furthermore, they heard how the city is accommodating evacuees, fostering Kibbutz Re’im in the city, and bolstering community resilience.
RESUMPTION OF FLIGHTS AND REOPENING OF TERMINAL 1 BOOST ISRAELI TOURISM
The reopening of Terminal 1 at Ben Gurion Airport and restarted operations from low-cost airlines might help reverse that trend, bolstering Israel’s struggling tourism sector. The number of tourists in Israel has slowly increased since the war broke out. “We’re now at around 25% to 30% of last year’s levels, with about 4,000 to 5,000 tourists entering daily”, the Ministry of Tourism said, “The tourists we’re seeing now are different from previous years. Most are faith-based visitors, such as Jews from the Diaspora, Catholics, evangelicals, and other Christian denominations. Many are coming in some form of volunteering or solidarity projects”. After many airlines cancelled flights to and from Israel, the Israel Airports Authority closed Terminal 1, the terminal used for low-cost flights. Last week, the terminal reopened for low-cost international flights. The Israel Airports Authority reported that the terminal will handle approximately 1,200 flights per month, carrying 200,000 passengers, with daily peaks of 6,500-7,000 passengers in July and August, a period during which many Israelis travel abroad for vacations.
MOROCCO SIGNS A CIVIL AVIATION MEMORANDUM WITH ISRAEL
The new agreement covers the sectors of engineering, maintenance, repair and transformation of aircraft, as explained by the Moroccan Minister of Industry, Ryad Mezzour, in a statement to the press after the signing ceremony of the agreement in Rabat in the presence of the president of IAI, the Former Israeli Defence Minister, Amir Peretz. “It is an agreement that has symbolism and capital importance for the development of the aeronautical industry of our country signed with a global industrial player,” the Moroccan minister congratulated himself.
According to the Moroccan minister, this memorandum will be implemented in several projects in which several airports have been defined as candidates such as Errachidia, Tata, Bouarfa (southeast) and Nouaceur (west), in addition to other areas that are being studied.
For his part, the IAI president stressed that the memorandum constitutes a supplementary stage in the creation of a new partnership between IAI and the aeronautical and space industries in Morocco.
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