Originally Posted by
NYTA
All of the east west stuff is meaningless if you have to fly around the Gulf states instead of over them. It adds so much time on flights to India that it can't be competitive with DXB and I suspect the same is true from Europe to Asia. Australia and South Africa are the likely exceptions.
NYTA,
I have to disagree with you. EL AL's flights to the far east are profitable. Are they as profitable as they would be if LY was allowed to overfly Saudi Arabia, the answer is clearly no, however even with the longer sector time utilizing a mix of 744/777/767 these routes are profitable, so much so that LY has increased their frequencies for Q1 of 2013.
Consequently, if EL AL is able to generate connecting traffic, these flights would continue to be profitable with the added bonus of more revenue. Make no mistake, I am not saying that TLV could be an east/west connecting hub on the same or similar scale as Dubai nor that they could generate such traffic on the scale Emirates does, nor that TLV at this point in time could compete with Dubai. What I am saying is that it is possible to grow EL AL's ops and volumes, in some part, by attracting east/west traffic and turning TLV into somewhat of a transit point.