Israel Bans Visitors From Italy; El Al Suspends All Flights To Italy And Thailand, Delays Their Japan Service Launch

47
DDMS IconNever Miss Another Deal - Follow DansDeals on Facebook

Israel, home to the harshest coronavirus bans on the planet, is now turning away non-Israelis arriving on flights from Italy. Israelis who have visited Italy will have to self-quarantine for 2 weeks.

Expect all flights between Italy and Israel to come to a halt.

Israel has now banned non-Israelis who have visited China, Hong Kong, Italy Japan, Macau, Singapore, South Korea, Taiwan, or Thailand in the past 2 weeks and quarantining Israelis who visited those countries.

  • El Al has suspended service to:
    • Milan through at least March 14th
    • Naples through at least March 14th
    • Rome through at least March 14th
    • Venice through at least March 14th
    • Bangkok through at least March 27th
    • Beijing through at least May 2nd
    • Hong Kong through at least May 2nd

I wrote on Sunday that Bangkok and Tokyo flights were in danger and now El Al has confirmed that new service to Tokyo that was scheduled to launch on March 11th will be postponed until at least April 4th.

Community spread of coronavirus seems inevitable for many countries at this point. With Israel advising its citizens to avoid all travel abroad, do you think Israel will eventually seal its borders and end all international flights?

Leave a Reply

47 Comments On "Israel Bans Visitors From Italy; El Al Suspends All Flights To Italy And Thailand, Delays Their Japan Service Launch"

All opinions expressed below are user generated and the opinions aren’t provided, reviewed or endorsed by any advertiser or DansDeals.

SR

Can someone explain why Israel is taking this virus to another level? It seems like Israel is the only country that’s really stepping up their game in protecting themselves. Not sure why but others aren’t nearly as concerned.

alarmed

Dan,
Would you fly to Eastern Europe over the next week?

Eliraps

Once you’re blocking Italy, how’s the rest of Europe. And how can anyone know if someone flying in from Zurich, Paris etc. hasn’t just been in Italy

Yochai

Agree. What about the opposite, passengers from North America who only connected in Italy?

bigdipper8545

It does not apply to connecting flights if you are for example flying from nyc to tlv with a stopover in rome you will be allowed entry to Israel. This is great news for Pesach travelers as many fly Alitalia after the Zman is over. This is according to Alitalia’s website
https://www.alitalia.com/en_us/fly-alitalia/news-and-activities/news/info-flights.html

NTorch

This link does not discuss flights from the US to Israel which connect through Italy. The only subject in the link is people who are flying from China.

E

Have some matzah at home on hand in case you don’t make it to Israel, that’s all I can say.

Yehudis

Not exactly. My husband arrived to Israel today; Alitalia JFK-TLV via MCO. It took close to 3 hours to get out of the airport despite half his flight being empty. First they only allowed Israelis to deplane and were told they’d be self-quarantined. A second bus came for the passengers of various nationalities who had only been transferring and hadn’t gone out of the airport – and they asked a lot of questions! The Italians were told to remain on the plane – don’t know what happened with them.

yed

Not sure if you want to be on a 8 hour (or so) flight from Italy to NYC oe Italy to TLV or vice versa together with many people that are returning from a stay in Italy…
And although this is not the case yet, but you can’t be sure how the Israeli health ministry will handle those passengers i the future either, especially if lets say a new case is confirmed by a passenger of a flight of that type although the person has not visited Italy at all.

LS

Can anyone post a HELPFUL comment to this:
For Pesach I bought 4 legs of a ticket
NYC to Rome on Norwegian with a 4 day stop over to tour.
Rome to TLV on RyanAir.
TLV to ATH Aegan Air
ATH to NYC (2 night stop over to tour) Norwegian
It’s crazy, but it ended up being $600 less a person than flying direct outside of the Eastern European airlines.

All bought w/ Chase Reserve. No extra insurance bought at the time of purchase. Can someone give me a helpful course of action. Would you do a wait and see? Would you call Norwegian or Ryan Air first for credit? I figure Ryan Air flight will most likely get cancelled.

ah giten

nice! (if not for Corona…)

Yonah

Pesach is about 5-6 weeks away, a whole lot can change in that time frame. It’s too early to tell.

E

I’d ask for a refund today. Try to look for direct flights or spend Pesach at home this year

Bocher

Interested to see what will happen with merkos shlichus for pesach

Benji

Are the Alitalia flights from Rome to Italy being canceled? I have a flight from NYC after Pesach with a stopover in Italy

Mark

Are prices for tickets going to fall?

Abc123

Dan, what are the chances that Israel will close all borders? Would they give advanced notice so people can leave if necessary?

Shmoogrr

I doubt the problem is leaving, the problem is only coming in. You can always leave through Gaza….

YM

Is there any value in not buying things online (Amazon) that are being shipped directly from China?

CM

Dan can you please post about ordering things on amazon that ship from China?? I order through Amazon prime so I guess most things ship from a warehouse in the US, but can you please clarify about this.

Deal Guy

I don’t blame Israel.
With guys needing to daven with 3 minyamin daily, quarantining whole neighborhoods might not work so well, especially if you don’t feel too sick.
So better to do whatever you can to avoid the virus in the first place, then to try to deal with it later.

Bob

Is the land border still open with Jordan? The real problem in the neighborhood is that Iran can’t be trusted to tell the truth about infections and deaths. The virus has already spread from Iran to Iraq. If the refugee camps in Syria become contagious, a pandemic is guaranteed in Israel’s back yard. Israeli political leaders may be talking about Europe and the Far East, but their major concerns are elsewhere.

Texas Totty

Would be cool if a company in the West Bank develops a vaccine and the UN says not to use it…

wpDiscuz