Middle East
Airlines cancel Middle East flights as escalation anxiety rises
By
The Washington Post August 6, 2024
Anika Arora Seth and Heidi Levine
The Washington Post August 6, 2024
Enav and Ariel Graff embrace their daughter Luna, 3, as they wait for a flight to Portugal. (Heidi Levine/The Washington Post)
As Israel braces for the retaliation that Hezbollah, Hamas and Iran have sworn is coming, more airlines are canceling flights to the Middle East. On Tuesday, Tel Aviv’s airport saw cancellation after cancellation — and, in some cases, families desperate to flee.
“We are going to Portugal, and we do not plan to go back,” said Enav Graff, 25, from Rehovot, as she waited at Ben Gurion Airport with her husband, three-year-old daughter and dog. “We are leaving behind our family and our country, a country that is ours, but the situation became so bad. “I am stressed all the time that there is going to be rockets, and my trust has been broken since Oct. 7 because the government’s reaction wasn’t good. I do not feel safe here anymore,” Graff added, fighting back tears as she struggled to hold her dog’s leash. In recent days the Lufthansa Group and Air India joined the growing list of airlines canceling flights in the region after the death of Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh in Tehran on July 31 and the killing of Hezbollah commander Fuad Shukr in an Israeli strike near Beirut on July 30. The Lufthansa Group — which includes Lufthansa Airlines, SWISS International Air Lines, Austrian Airlines, Brussels Airlines and Eurowings — canceled all flights to Amman and Irbil through Wednesday. All group flights to Tel Aviv, Tehran and Beirut are suspended up to and including Aug. 12, extending a previous suspension on flights to and from Beirut that was in place until Monday. Air India announced last week that it would cancel flights to and from Tel Aviv until Thursday. Italy’s ITA Airways extended a previously announced cancellation of flights to and from Tel Aviv through Thursday, citing “geopolitical developments in the Middle East” in an email to The Washington Post. Some airlines have imposed longer periods for cancellations. Delta Air Lines also extended an earlier suspension of Tel Aviv flight routes until Aug. 31.
United Airlines was among the first to cancel flights to Israel. In an email to The Post on July 31, the carrier said it had indefinitely suspended its daily flight to Tel Aviv, starting with that afternoon’s scheduled departure from New Jersey, and would decide when to resume service “with a focus on the safety of our customers and crews.” In response to the widespread cancellations, Israel’s Foreign Ministry published an online form Saturday to help Israelis who are stuck abroad and have no way back home. Some Israelis, such as Shimon Asulin, 52, are committed to standing their ground in the country. Asulin stood with balloons at the airport’s arrival hall to welcome home his wife, Miri, as well as his daughter and sister-in-law as they returned from a vacation in New York. The family has lived in Sderot, Israel, for more than 25 years, Miri Asulin said. “We were forced to be displaced for months after Oct. 7 but came back to our home in Sderot several months ago,” the 47-year-old said at the airport, as the family waved the small Israeli flags that they carried in their luggage to New York and back. “We are not afraid. We trust in God and our army to protect us.” Despite the threat of war, some airlines have resumed flights. European budget airline Wizz Air, based in Hungary, suspended flights to and from Israel and Jordan over the weekend and on Monday, the airline confirmed to The Post, but resumed those routes Tuesday morning. British Airways confirmed in an email that the airline is continuing to operate flights to and from Tel Aviv as scheduled. Qatar Airways said in a social media post Saturday that the airline had not suspended any flights to or from Amman, Beirut and Baghdad. Reports to the contrary were “misinformation,” the airline wrote.