Originally Posted by
Innocent Abroad
I think you all miss the point that all of these flights will fly into the new Ramon airpot, which is only 19km from Eilat.
The new Ramon Airport is unlikely to be open by October when the flights plan to land (see website
http://www.ramon-airport.com) so in the beginning the passengers will continue to fly to Ovda and take the
shuttle to Eilat, but sometime during next winter these services will probably move over to Ramon.
The news also connects to the rumors about Ryanair opening a base in Israel (Ramon or TLV?) and also the news that Israel Katz is trying to allow foreign airlines to fly domestic routes like TLV-Eilat. So the combined news is definitely a combined hit on LY, Arkia, and Israir.
By the way, has there ever been such a dramatic announcement by any airline of so many new routes to TLV? Assuming each aircraft will do two rotations a day, that means that this winter Ryanair are dedicating around 3 aircraft full time to Israel this winter.