Israeli Channels 12 and 13 (the spin-offs of former Channel 2) ran an item today about this. I don't know how accurate their analysis is (maybe this time it is less flawed than the usual), but they have found much cheaper flights than from Ben Gurion for the same destinations (40% to 88% cheaper) during off-season. This is apparently due to the government subsidizing the airport fees and even paying the operators a small bonus for every tourist landing there. I assume they are trying to ease the congestion at TLV.

It's a pain to get to the airport, but the difference in expenses for a family is substantial.

While what you're saying is correct, please note that:

1) Most of these flights only operate during the winter, when it's low season and it's easy to find low prices from TLV, too.
2) There are fewer airlines and destinations available from VDA compared to TLV, and the schedule is not as frequent.
3) All destinations available from VDA are in Europe.

Just to take a quick example: I searched for tickets from VDA and TLV with Ryanair to Milan (Ryanair serves both routes) in the third week of January. From VDA, you can find seats at 9.99 euros, while TLV is from 33.99 euros. While a 70% saving seems huge, we're only talking about 24 euros. For a family of four, that's 96 euros. If you're living in Beer Sheva, it's probably worth it to drive to VDA for the flight. But if you're living in Haifa, the cost of traveling to VDA is eating up your entire savings, plus the fact that you have to drive another four hours each way.

Also note that if you wanna take public transportation, you'll need to travel via Eilat both ways, thus making the trip to the airport extremely long and painful.

I saw �41 return with WIZZ from LTN.