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Following the horrific incidents in October of last year, the three major US carriers as well as most European carriers took the decision to suspend their services to Israel. Since then, we’ve started to see some European carriers resume their Tel Aviv operations, but up until now, we haven’t had any solid indication as to when the US carriers will follow suit.
That has now changed.
American Airlines is on record as saying that it will not resume operations between New York and Tel Aviv before October this year, while Delta has indicated that it may resume at least one of its three services to Tel Aviv in April, but it looks like United Airlines is being a little more bullish.
Prior to 6 October 2023, United Airlines offered four routes to Tel Aviv (out of Newark, Chicago, San Francisco, and Washington D.C.), and now the airline says that it is ready to restart one of those routes from 2 March.
Importantly, however, the route will look a little different for the first couple of flights.
United Airlines returns to Tel Aviv
On 2 and 4 March 2024, United Airlines will operate single flights between Newark and Tel Aviv via Munich ‘to ensure all service providers are ready to support non-stop service to and from Newark‘.
The return flights on 3 and 5 March will also stop at Munich, while no flights from Newark are planned for those dates.
This is what the schedule for those flights will look like:
UA84 EWR 16:40 – 06:15+1 day MUC 07:45+1 day – 12:25+1 day TLV
UA85 TLV 14:25 – 17:25 MUC 18:55 – 22:00 EWR
Based on the schedules, it doesn’t look like passengers will be picked up or dropped off at Munich, and based on the 90 minutes ground time, it looks like passengers will remain onboard while the aircraft is on the ground in Munich.
As of 6 March 2024 (and all being well with the flights on the previous days), United will resume a daily non-stop service between Newark and Tel Aviv on the following schedule:
UA84 EWR 15:55 – 09:20+1 day TLV (Daily)
UA85 TLV 11:30 – 16:40 EWR (Daily)
The route will be operated by a United Airlines 787-10 Dreamliner offering 44 Business Class seats, 21 Premium Economy seats, and 253 Economy Class seats.
The airline has said that it has ‘conducted a detailed safety analysis’ in making the decision to resume flights to Israel and that it hopes to have a second daily Newark – Tel Aviv flight operating from May.
Services to Tel Aviv from Chicago, San Francisco and DC are not expected to resume before the fall.
Bottom line
United Airlines is set to to be the first US carrier to resume any of its services to Tel Aviv following the October 2023 atrocities with the airline planning to operate flights from Newark via Munich on 2 and 4 March 2024 and then non-stop services between Newark and Tel Aviv from 6 March 2024.
Bookings for these flights are now open on United.com.
Really about time. Any rationalization based upon safety disappeared long ago and El Al has managed to take tremendous market share by increasing it’s own (always packed) flights, and leaving those with United status out in the cold. What are American and Delta waiting for?
Not sure about Delta, but based on the fact that American is not planning a return until winter, I’d guess that it has repurposed the TLV aircraft on a different route for the summer season.