El Al Israel Airlines Ltd. (TASE: ELAL ) is to launch a weekly non-stop flight from Tel Aviv to Las Vegas starting June 14, 2019. The new route will earn El Al the €250,000 grant paid by the Ministry of Tourism to carriers who inaugurate a direct route to a destination not yet serving Israel.
Return fares on the new route begin at $1,300 return. Fares for a one-way ticket from Tel Aviv to Las Vegas on June 21 or 28 are $668 but jump to $1,000-1,400 on other dates. A single fare return from Las Vegas to Tel Aviv cost $630 on July 3 but can rise as high as $1,300 on other dates.
The flights will operate using the recently delivered Boeing Dreamliner aircraft with tourist, premium and business class options.
The weekly flights will leave Ben Gurion airport on Friday mornings at 7 am and arrive at 11.15 am in Las Vegas after a 14 hours 15 minutes flight. The return flight will leave Las Vegan on Saturday nights at 11.45 pm and arrive in Israel on Sunday at 10.15 pm after a 13 hours 30 minutes flight.
El Al also announced that it will launch its direct flights from Tel Aviv to San Francisco starting May 13, 2019. It will compete on the route with United Airlines, which operates daily flights between Tel Aviv and San Francisco.
With the start of flights to Las Vegas and San Francisco, El Al will be operating direct flights to seven destinations in North America - New York (JFK and Newark), Boston, Miami, Toronto and Los Angeles as well as Las Vegas and San Francisco.
Return fares on the Tel Aviv - San Francisco flights will start at $1,250.
El Al CEO Gonen Usishkin said, "We expect to fly tens of thousands of Israelis and tourists coming to Israel on our new routes and we will continue to work to expand the company's network of destinations."
Minister of Tourism Yariv Levin said, "With new records broken in the number of tourists coming to Israel and with close to a million American tourists coming to Israel over the past year, opening a direct route to Las Vegas is a further stage in opening up new routes from North America. The route will contribute to incoming tourist traffic from the surrounding region such as Nevada, Arizona, Utah and Oregon and including Christian pilgrims. Launching the new route is a welcome continuation of the cooperation between the Ministry of Tourism and El Al, following the opening of the route to Miami."
Published by Globes, Israel business news - en.globes.co.il - on December 10, 2018
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