Every time I fly TLV-ZRH-USA or USA-ZRH-TLV, I have to reclear. Only time I didn't need to reclear was Schengen-ZRH-TLV (though I did need to exit passport control).

It depends which pier is you are departing from.

It doesn't matter if the flight is profitable in this context. We are talking about whether TLV is a viable hub for the passengers. With the added flight time to India, etc it would be silly for someone to transit TLV from Europe/US to those destinations at current prices. I flew TLV-AMM-BKK. Door to door was the same time. Price on RJ was cheaper. If I am in NYC and want to fly to BOM, would it make sense for me to transit TLV when the TLV-BOM flight is 7 hours? No.

NYC-TLV 10.5 hours
TLV-BOM 8 hours
18.5 hours flying time and USD ~1700

NYC-AMS 7.5 hours
AMS-BOM 9 hours
16.5 hours flying time and USD ~700

NYC-AUH 12.5 hours
AUH-BOM 3.5 hours
16 hours flying time and USD ~900

I'm surprised that the delta in flying time is only 2 hours, but look at the price differential. You'd have to be nuts. If LY brings prices down to match the other airlines, there goes the profitability anyway.

Pretty sure any connecting passenger who arrives at the E gates, regardless of final destination, will have to re-clear security if connecting. And the E gates are all the non Schengen flights

OK. How about this one. I know someone in London who travels to Hong Kong about once a month. He has children and grandchildren in Israel. He usually travels via TLV in order to meet them on his way - either by taking an overnight stop, or even by just spending a few hours at the airport together. Yes, it would be quicker to travel direct to HKG from London, but this way he accomplishes two tasks at once.

But that's far from the norm.

Viability of TLV Hub
 

Yosi,

I believe the issues of whether TLV is a viable hub for passengers transiting between east/west and the issue of whether LY could transport these passengers profitably east/west are interrelated.

From a passenger viability perspective, transiting through TLV is obviously not a viable option for those who favor speed. However, TLV could be a viable option for passengers who may be induced to fly through TLV because of a lower fare, desire to spend some time in Israel, or even combining two business trips into one. For these critical mass of people (by critical mass I do not mean large number) TLV would be a viable and even a preferred option. I recently spoke to an LY insider who brought up this topic themselves and said one of the things that frustrated them was the fact that LY did not even attempt to get such traffic (through marketing and creation of a ladder of fares on the website for such) and did not schedule flights conducive for such.

The second interrelated issue is whether these flights would be profitable due to the longer sector times. LY flights to the far east currently are profitable at higher fares and have pretty good loads. It would not cost LY anything to schedule these flights for ease of connecting traffic for increasing loads. In addition, one should not presume the high fares LY charges between TLV and the far east are a direct consequence of longer sector costs and not monopoly power and/or higher company cost structure. If longer sector times alone was the cause of higher fares, then the European airlines would charge even higher fares than LY does from TLV to the far east. The issue here would be how low these fares could be sold and still generate a profit which is interrelated to the issues of LY's bloated management, inefficient a/c, and high cost structure. If EL AL's cost structure could be lowered substantially, as I believe it can, then these fares could become profitable for the airline in spite of the higher sector costs.

There is also a geo-political variable at play here. The Middle East is undergoing radical political change. There are near daily riots in the Gulf (Bahrain) which could spread to the Emirates and therefore destroy their east/west hub ops. These same riots are happening in Saudi Arabia. Without delving into politics, who is to say that the Saudi Regime will last much longer? It is entirely possible that the Saudi regime could be over thrown and a new government instilled there which would allow LY to overfly its airspace.

The saudis will not be overthrown as long as they have the worlds largest proven oil reserves and many important people handily in their pocket.
That variable is IMO a dead end corridor for the next 10 years.
But who knows, if these large shale oil discoveries may lessens their influence, but it won't lesses what they have already invested (and in whom they did invest). I think it's a fair assumption that they will have rather riots if they are going to allow LY aircrafts through their air space, but as long as they are appeasing those...

Bernie,

Middle East geo-politics, especially during these days, is extremely fluid and changes one would have never imagined before are happening. The whole map of the Middle East is in the process of being re-drawn which potentially presents an opportunity for LY to overfly some countries it previously could not.

It is entirely possible that the new Syrian regime, once their civil war is over with, will allow LY to overfly their airspace thereby considerably cutting sector times between both TLV and PEK/HKG.

The same situation may occur with Saudi Arabia which will considerably cut sector flight times to India and BKK.

The new regimes of these nations do not have to be at formal/official "peace" with Israel to allow Israeli planes to overfly their territory. American commercial planes routinely overly Iran, so it is entirely possible that one day, in the near future, a situation my develop where Israeli commercial planes overfly Syria and Saudi Arabia on the way to the far east thereby further creating conditions ripe for TLV to become an east/west transit hub and for the new EL AL to take advantage of that market.

In order to take advantage of that market, LY needs to position itself to do so. That would require doing the things I mentioned earlier on this thread; namely marketing and offering a ladder of connection fares between east/west and scheduling flight times accordingly to get a critical mass of that traffic.

Money can buy you a lot of love and strong symbiosis, I have been many years ago for the first time in Egypt and I felt big things are going to happened, they are humans, just as you and I.

Sure

Not going to happened

Well, it all depends on the hearts and mind of the people on the ground, there is perhaps a strong trend in the making, but a sausage has two ends.

So, lets have a look on both and the guys at the grill too.

Its always good to have a deeper vision while making business decisions, just make sure that one allows to accomodate enough facts in a vision, otherwise the vision can become first a dream and then a nightmare...

There are plenty of smart guys in IL who know the region better than I do, maybe LY has those numbers too and they know what they can or can not do. Why not just call them?

You think it is per se an extremly profitable idea to have your planes on any airport of this planet prepared and secured like Air Force 1?

All B763's are leased.

Also, given the fact that the 763's are fuel inefficient, on top of needing to be refurbished, I would never even consider retaining them from the lessors should I reconstitute the airline. Much better and simpler to go with brand new efficient A330s.

Syria, perhaps. Saudi Arabia, not gonna happen. The closest they'd come to letting Israeli planes fly over their airspace are Wikileaks which claim they told the Americans they *may* let the IAF fly over to attack Iran. (That's not meant as a political point - simply stating how far they are.) Their regime is a lot stabler than Assad's.

Brand new?

Josh,

By brand new I meant unused A330's delivered straight from the Airbus factory as oppose to second hand ones. Did not mean that the A330 model is a brand new one.

We have peace with Jordan and an apparently pro-Western, US-backed, non-Islamic democracy in Iraq. Much as with the Red Sea, there is an international flightpath through the Straits of Hormuz that Iran and the Gulf States are not permitted to intercede with.

Not an inkling of Israel's overflight rights that way (which is very direct), so what makes anyone think any other Arab country, with or without a dose of spring cleaning, is going to permit it?

On top of that, even if LY is not permitted to fly this way, third country airlines should really be allowed by Israel and the Arab states...