YIR: Delta Cancels Atlanta Service to Israel Indefinitely
The airline directly contacted Atlanta travelers who had flight reservations to Israel before Oct. 11, 2023, when flights were stopped, offering a special travel waiver.
In early December, an Israeli plane took off from Eilat headed to Ben Gurion Airport outside Tel Aviv. As passengers watched in fear and amazement, rockets could be seen outside the windows, many, if not all, intercepted by Israel’s missile defense system known as Iron Dome.
American airlines aren’t willing to take those kinds of risks. As the war was launched by Hamas on Oct. 7, thousands of rockets and their interceptors dotted the skies over many Israeli cities, preceded by piercing sirens warning residents to flee for safe rooms, stairwells, and bomb shelters. And foreign airlines delayed, then canceled their flights to and from Tel Aviv, some for the immediate future and some indefinitely.
Delta Air Lines direct flights between Atlanta and Tel Aviv fall into the latter category. A statement released by the Atlanta-based airline said, “Delta is continuously monitoring the security environment in Israel to inform cancellations to our flight schedule to and from Ben Gurion Airport in Tel Aviv.”
After the initial onslaught on Southern Israel of thousands of terrorists and marauders from Gaza on Oct. 7, at least 1,200 people were killed, thousands injured and approximately 240 taken hostage into Gaza. After calling up more than 250,000 army reservists, Israel started bombarding Gaza and eventually launched its ground offensive. Within a week of the outbreak of hostilities, the U.S. State Department raised its travel advisory to Level 3, asking citizens to reconsider travel to Israel.
For Atlantans and other travelers around the Southeast, it was a particular disappointment when Delta stopped its Atlanta nonstop service to Israel. Delta had only reopened its nonstop flights between Atlanta and Tel Aviv in spring 2023, after a long hiatus. Delta had last operated that route in 2011. When it announced the resumption of direct, nonstop Atlanta flights, Delta boasted that the launch brought the “total of weekly Delta flights to Tel Aviv to 13, from three U.S. hubs – Atlanta, Boston and New York-JFK.”
At the time, Anat Sultan-Dadon, Consul General of Israel to the Southeastern U.S. said, “We welcome the important decision by Delta to reinstate direct flights between Atlanta and Tel Aviv, a decision long awaited by many. These direct flights will serve to further strengthen the close relations between Israel, the State of Georgia and the Southeastern U.S. and we are confident that they will have a significant and positive impact on our relations in so many fields including political, economic, academic, and cultural exchanges.”
Hamas put an abrupt end to that confidence.
After at first suspending its flights between Tel Aviv and Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport and Boston Logan International Airport in October, a few weeks later Delta announced that its flights between Tel Aviv and New York’s John F. Kennedy International Airport “will continue to be canceled.” The airline cited U.S. State Department travel advisories as part of its security guidance and intelligence reports as the basis for its flight cancellations.
Delta, however, made a distinction between suspended Israel flights to and from JFK Airport and the flights between Atlanta and Boston; the latter are canceled indefinitely.
The airline directly contacted Atlanta travelers who had flight reservations to Israel before Oct. 11, 2023, when flights were stopped, offering a special travel waiver. The waiver allows those travelers to rebook their travel on available flights through Sept. 6, 2024. “This waiver allows these customers to process their own changes via the Fly Delta app, My Trips on delta.com or by calling Delta Reservations for support.”
Many Delta travelers received a credit, from which they can “purchase” other Delta flights. But at least some of those have to be redeemed by April 2, 2024, and the travel must begin no later than Sept. 6.
Atlanta travelers determined to fly to Israel, of course, always have the option to fly on Israel’s national airline, El Al, which flies out of JFK, Boston, and Miami. But if the travelers want to use their Delta credit or are committed to flying on their home-based airline, there is another option for traveling to Israel.
They can book a flight on Delta to one of the many European cities the airline continues to fly to, and then book a ticket from there to Tel Aviv. Atlantans can fly direct to Amsterdam, Barcelona, Dublin, Edinburgh, Frankfurt, Istanbul, London Heathrow, Paris, Madrid, and Milan. But it also flies to Athens, Greece, where passengers can choose to fly El Al for the short hop-skip-and-jump flights to Tel Aviv. El Al, for instance, flies five nonstop flights per day between Athens and Tel Aviv. El Al also flies between Tel Aviv and London or Barcelona.
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