Swissair yesterday retracted the decision it had made at the beginning of the week to cut its flights to Israel by 50%. The company’s management in Zurich announced it had decided to continue operating two daily flights (14 weekly flights) from Zurich, Switzerland to Ben Gurion Airport in Israel.
The code-sharing agreement between El Al and Swissair was renewed yesterday, after being suspended by El Al a week ago, due to the discontinuation of Swissair’s activity. Flights will continue in the reduced format until October 28, 2001, the end of the summer schedule.
The 230-seat Airbus 330 Aircraft operating on the line will be replaced with a 178-seat Airbus 321.
When the winter schedule goes into effect on October 29, Swiss Airlines will operate two daily flights from Tel-Aviv to Zurich and back: one in the morning and another in the afternoon. The timetable will be published soon.
Another European airline that had to scale back its activity in Israel is Dutch company KLM, which will cut its weekly flights from eight to five, as of October 28. The company will also start using Boeing 767s, which are smaller than the MD-11s it is using at present.
KLM cancelled its stopover in Cyprus on its flights from Holland to Israel. As of yesterday, the Amsterdam-Tel Aviv flights are nonstop, without a stopover for changing the crew in Larnaca, a move initiated following the terrorist attacks in Tel Aviv and Jerusalem. The crews are again spending the night in Israel.
Published by Israel's Business Arena on 11 October, 2001