Is there a chance that AF finally send widebodies to TLV?
 

AF has been sending their A320s to TLV for ages.
Is there a chance that AF finally sends widebodies to TLV?

Maybe keep your related question in the same thread?

In general very low yield traffic on TLV and about just doable with an A320/B737 from Western Europe.
Additionally many LCC options making it an uninteresting market for European network carriers

Not a chance, tendency is the other way for Europe to TLV in all legacies besides El-Al.

BA runs a daily 787-900 and a 777 six days a week on LHR-TLV. They also run a late evening 321 in a long-haul configuration [flat bed seats] five days a week.

Perhaps the extra hour or so over CDG-TLV makes it infeasible for a short haul configuration.

LX also has a twice-daily 330 on ZRH-TLV.

It's just a question of priorities.

No way am I spending 5 hours in a fake Business Class Economy seat even if I then get La Première service at CDG and home to LAX. We're going to Israel in January and have decided to visit Petra at the end of the trip, basically to be able to fly a First Class product (EK) all the way home.

Or traffic potential.

why would there be more traffic from ZRH than from CDG?

Exactly.
Europeans should stop being myopic and look at providing high quality TATL connection traffic to TLV.

I understand that much of BA's TLV traffic is connecting intercontinental traffic. (Especially since AA won't fly there because they involuntarily inherited US's pension scheme for former TLV-based staff, a scheme they refuse to honour despite the Israeli legal system decreeing otherwise.) I don't have the exact numbers though.

I don't know about LX ... but I would imagine there is a fair amount of connecting traffic.

Maybe AF/KL are not interested—you can't do everything. It depends where you want to send your widebodies. Most folks who book tickets don't know what the difference is. That's why we still have angle flats.

And let's not forget most pax fly in Y where there is no real difference. (Although having an IFE would be nice)
Flying AMS-TLV 4 or 5 times in the last few years, KL operate a 739 with a fixed 6 rows J cabin, in most of the flights with only few paying pax, I've seen as many as 10 opups at the gate since Y is usually overbooked.

I agree with olivedel on that one. LHR, ZRH, and GVA all have more premium O/D traffic with TLV than CDG for different reasons. Moreover, whilst UK-Israel traffic is largely focused on London and Manchester and Switzerland-Israel traffic on Zurich, Geneva (and Basel), the France-Israel traffic is far more diverse with strong links between Israel and not just Paris but also Marseille, Nice, Lyon, Bordeaux, Toulouse, Strasbourg, Montpellier, etc. This lowers AF's natural advantage a lot.

And yes, BA does benefit from AA's absence on the route, whilst on the Skyteam side, DL's JFK-TLV is an extremely popular route and one that many US and Israeli residents alike will prefer over AF connections regardless of plane type.

TLV is not high yield in either O/D (it used to be but low costs have changed that massively) or connecting traffic (J fares are low and distance is long), so AF have chosen to get their share of it with more frequencies but smaller planes where LX and BA have been able to support more larger planes. Note that LH used to be all widebodies to TLV and no longer, and that even BA could for a long time only support a claim of long haul planes to TLV by rearranging 321s which created much discussion on the BA forum. Now that traffic has picked up again they have been able to reintroduce some 'proper' long haul planes.

Surely ZRH and GVA have more premium traffic than Paris *proportionally* - but in absolute numbers? ZRH is a glorified village, the agglomeration is slightly more than the tenth of the Ile de France. And CDG offers way more connectivity than ZRH does. ZRH does have its little Brooklyn, but that alone doesn't explain it.

So I am surprised as well that LX has two widebodies a day to TLV. But guess what, they fly an A320 to Cairo.

Indeed, the economics of the routes can vary a lot between neighboring countries. AF is sending European narrowbodies to TLV and AMM, but has B777 to CAI and BEY. And in case of BEY, they even have P.
For TLV, I had the occasion to speak with AF people and they told me that they thought for once to have a small sub-fleet of A32s with a real J seat for long medium-haul flights, but the idea was abandoned because too complicated to handle. And they are satisfied with the current results of the route. It is true that the AF TLV flights are most of the time packed with a significant number of J rows (I know a full flight doesn't mean a profitable one, but at least it is a good indicator that the pax are not going away from AF because of the aircraft configuration and product).

Not really IMHO. Paris is a largely leisure destination for Israelis and Israel a largely leisure destination for Parisians. By contrast, part of the banking traffic between Israel and Switzerland is business.

Oh, and Paris is a glorified village too! ;)

On a serious note, the proportionality does matter too. Paris-Tel Aviv is a large route but very heavily leisure - short haul planes are probably best to capture it, and to my knowledge, AF and France seem to have a rather poor reputation in Israel not only in terms of service but also in terms of safety, so I think that Israelis with an interest in connecting premium itineraries much prefer to fly LX or BA or even LH than AF or AZ.