El Al Israel Airlines Ltd. (TASE: ELAL) subsidiary Sun D'Or is launching routes from Tel Aviv to Paphos in Cyprus (three weekly flights from late June), Cluj in Romania (two weekly flights), and Verona in Italy (one weekly flight starting in July). Sun D'Or will operate regular flights to 14 destinations in the spring and summer of 2020, in addition to operating charter flights for tourist wholesalers, for example to Greece, Zanzibar, and the Seychelles Islands. The charter flights will be sold mainly in packages, not through Sun D'Or. These flights will be added to Sun D'Or's summer flight schedule (May-October).
Sun D'Or is also stepping up the frequency of its flights to existing destinations, including Naples in Italy (four weekly flights), Odessa in Ukraine (five), Thessaloniki in Greece (four), Tbilisi in Georgia (two), Cracow in Poland (three), Zagreb in Croatia (three), and Salzburg in Austria and Catania on the Italian island of Sicily (two weekly flights each).
Other destinations in the summer schedules are Malaga in Spain, Dubrovnik in Croatia, and Ljubljana in Slovenia. On some of these routes, Sun D'Or will face challenging competition from low-cost airlines that already operate direct flights to the destinations launched by Sun D'Or, for example Ryanair, which operates flights from Tel Aviv to Paphos, and Wizz Air, which operates flights from Tel Aviv to Cluj. Italian low-cost airline Neos Air operates low-cost flights from Ben Gurion Airport to Verona.
The number of Sun D'Or's passengers is not reported separately from those of El Al. Sun D'Or uses leased planes for some of its flights ("wet" leasing, which includes hired flight teams for the rented planes and El Al's service manager).
Israir Airlines and Tourism Ltd. also recently announced that it would begin flying to new destinations this summer: Yerevan, Armenia; Palma de Mallorca, Spain; and Riga, Latvia.
Published by Globes, Israel business news - en.globes.co.il - on February 5, 2020
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