El Al CEO: We’ll launch routes to Melbourne, Tokyo, Dublin

El Al Israel Airlines Ltd. (TASE:ELAL) CEO Dina Ben-Tal Ganancia has told the Google tourism conference in Tel Aviv that the carrier plans to launch direct flights to Melbourne, Tokyo and Japan. All three new routes were announced in 2019 before the outbreak of the Covid pandemic and then canceled when international travel was disrupted.

Assuming that El Al is granted permission to fly over Saudi airspace, flights from Tel Aviv to Melbourne in Australia will take 15 hours, similar to the distance between Tel Aviv and Los Angeles, another route on which El Al is the only carrier, Ben-Tal Ganacia said. El Al will also be the only carrier operating on the routes between Tel Aviv and Tokyo and Tel Aviv and Dublin.

Ben-Tal Ganacia also told the conference that in five years, El Al expects that 80% of ticket sales will be through digital channels. At present 35% of tickets are sold via the Internet and app and together with digital bookings by travel agents this climbs to 50%.

Published by Globes, Israel business news – en.globes.co.il – on July 25 2022.

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