United started flying between Chicago and Tel Aviv in September and resumed service between Washington DC and Tel Aviv in October.
With Israel’s borders remaining closed to foreign nationals, it’s no surprise that sales have been slow on United’s newest routes to Tel Aviv.
Last month United cancelled flights between Washington DC and Tel Aviv until at least March 5th.
And now United is cancelling flights between Chicago and Tel Aviv from January 4th until at least February 1st.
I wouldn’t be surprised to see United extend the Chicago to Tel Aviv route suspension into February if Israel doesn’t open their borders by the beginning of January.
United is reducing flights between Newark and Tel Aviv from 14 to 10 weekly in January.
They are flying 3 weekly flights between San Francisco and Tel Aviv and they are currently selling daily flights between San Francisco and Tel Aviv starting on February 1st. That too will likely be culled back to 3 weekly flights if Israel doesn’t open their borders by the beginning of January.
Israel isn’t the only place where United is making cuts, they are also suspending January and/or February flights between Newark-Honolulu, Newark-Seattle, Newark-Portland/PDX, Boston-San Francisco, Denver-Kauai, LaGuardia-West Palm Beach, LaGuardia-Fort Myers, LaGuardia-Tampa, and more.
United is the only airline in the world that has maintained daily service to Tel Aviv during this pandemic. They even changed their post-Yom Kippur flight time when a DansDeals reader requested them to do so.
Were you booked on any of these cancelled flights?
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21 Comments On "United Suspends Service On A 2nd Route To Israel"
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I was on this flight last night TLV-ORD and was surprised that it was still running — everyone had 3 seats to themselves! Dinner KSML was bad and infinitely worse than Fresko.
I flew ewr-tlv on thanksgiving with a 40% capacity
Tlv-ewr this Sunday was 25% capacity
Spoke to pilots who noted that cargo was full and that’s a majority of profit (loss?) made now.
Most flights will offer a 799.99 upgrade from economy to business on Mobil check in within the 24 hour period before boarding.
Considering most round trip flights sell around 700$ it’s a decent deal @ 2300$ round trip business.
The ORD flights faired well and at times were more full than the EWR flights…
If they were doing better than EWR, they wouldn’t be suspended…
even looking at open seats on flights this week will prove ORD flights at higher capacity compared to EWR
There’s no correlation between flight loads and flight profitability.
a rather unpleasant and unverified comment
I mean, facts are facts.
They’re not suspending the more profitable flight.
I bet the fact that there was really only 1 weekly flight Shomer Shabbos people could take in the ORD-TLV direction, didn’t help…
We don’t know why UA would suspend a route for 4 weeks but United had a route manager in ORD for this flight when I took it and she claims the airline was satisfied with pax and cargo loads…no route to TLV is currently “profitable” during the pandemic… FYI- UA84 EWR-TLV has also been reduced to 3x/week
If they were actually satisfied, it wouldn’t be suspended. Full stop.
There can be other obstacles even if a flight is profitable. Especially now.
Additionally they can be still getting $ from the state of Israel to be keeping up daily service to NY (theory has been noted here, and elsewhere) – if that’s the case it isn’t because NY flights are *actually* more profitable.
That was back in April due to LYs shutdown and has nothing to do with now.
I agree and could even be re-scheduling planning to use planes for cargo delivery of vaccinations…. in any case nobody expected any new route to be profitable till the pandemic was over…Dan decides UA was not satisfied and that’s that I guess…
An airline suspends a route when it is performing below expectations. Expectations don’t have to mean profitable, but they can also mean above a certain level of losses.
They don’t suspend a route nilly willy when it is performing well.
But by all means, what is your theory for why ORD-TLV was suspended if it was performing so well?
So what about US Air and the whole PHL-TLV route? That was supposedly a very popular and profitable route until someone said it wasn’t.
That was due to AA taking over and needing to figure out their TWA liabilities.
Those are now sorted out, but AA has far more valuable hubs than USAir’s PHL hub for TLV. AA would want to make DFW, JFK, and MIA to TLV a success before they would go back to PHL-TLV.
This site is called “DANS DEALS” isn’t it? I think we all trust Dan’s opinion!!
It’s likely EWR is getting more premium passengers, and that the displaced ORD people were coming from connecting flights anyway and can now be easily rebooked via EWR.
Correct
I am a “cohen” and i would like to know if united allows dead bodies on their airplanes and if they do who does not?