Iran’s Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, defines his campaign against Israel as being won as much through economics and psychological coercion as through victories on the battlefield. And nearly a year into the Jewish state’s war with Hamas, Iran’s military proxy in the Gaza Strip, Khamenei’s strategy appears to be advancing—with an assist from the U.S. airline industry.
For most of the past year, none of the three major American carriers—United Airlines, American Airlines, or Delta—have flown to Israel, citing the Gaza war and the security threats posed by Tehran and its military allies. And none of these airlines have offered definitive time frames for when their flights might resume. This has left Israel’s national carrier, El Al, as the only direct connection between the country and its closest ally and economic partner on the other side of the world, and has sent airfares between the U.S. and Israel skyrocketing.
In recent days, the cost of a round trip economy flight to Tel Aviv from New York on El Al is around $2,500, according to Israeli travel agencies, up from around $899 before October 7, 2023. United, American, and Delta previously all had at least one daily flight to Israel from New York or Newark, and together served Israel three times a week from Boston, Dallas, Miami, Chicago, and Washington D.C.
The suspension of the American flights is feeding into the economic and diplomatic isolation that Iran’s leaders are seeking, according to Israeli political and business leaders. “The American carriers are playing into Iran’s game,” said Eyal Hulata, who served as national security adviser to two Israeli prime ministers, Naftali Bennett and Yair Lapid, from 2021–2023.
Jerusalem’s allies in Washington are urgently seeking to establish clearer U.S. government guidelines for when U.S. airlines should halt traffic to Israel, and when it can resume. If not, they warn, American carriers risk bolstering, even unwittingly, the economic coercion that Iran and Israel’s critics in the West are pursuing, often under the banner of the Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions movement, or BDS.
“In my view, unless there’s an objective process put in place to prevent the politicization of air travel, I predict that in the future the BDS movement will try to weaponize air travel as a new means of boycotting Israel,” U.S. Rep. Ritchie Torres (D-New York) told The Free Press. “And a travel ban has the potential to be the most potent weapon in BDS’s war against the Jewish state.”
Torres wrote the presidents of American, Delta, and United in August asking them to map out the guidelines they followed in deciding to suspend their routes to Israel. None of the three airlines issued an official response to Torres’ letter, and his staff says they have communicated with the U.S. carriers’ government affairs teams, but didn’t disclose the result of these discussions.
Current and former Israeli officials told The Free Press they’re particularly confused by the U.S. airlines’ decisions as a number of Middle Eastern, African, and European carriers are currently flying to Tel Aviv despite these security threats. That includes three airlines from the United Arab Emirates—Etihad Airways, FlyDubai, and Wizz Air Abu Dhabi—whose government only normalized diplomatic relations with Israel in 2020 as part of the Trump administration’s Abraham Accords. These pacts seek to integrate Israel economically and diplomatically into the wider Arab world.
“They should fly to Israel exactly like the Gulf countries and others do,” said Hulata, the former national security adviser. “And if they don’t do this because they are scared of rockets, then there’s something fundamentally wrong in their decision making.”
Hulata, who now serves as a senior fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies in Washington, added: “There hasn’t been a rocket anywhere close to the airport for months.”
The three major U.S. carriers initially halted air travel to Israel last October 7 after Hamas militants crossed the country’s southern border and slaughtered 1,200 people, mostly civilians. The airlines’ decisions weren’t ordered, however, by the U.S.’s airline regulator, the Federal Aviation Administration. The FAA only cautioned American carriers against flying to Israel at the time.
The FAA’s position was actually much more restrained than in the summer of 2014. Then, Hamas rocket strikes close to Israel’s Ben Gurion Airport—the primary international hub near Tel Aviv—caused the airline authority to briefly suspend all outbound U.S. flights. Israeli officials were incensed, arguing the ban amounted to an assault on the country’s economy. American supporters of Israel, including former New York mayor Michael Bloomberg, flew to Tel Aviv on El Al flights to show solidarity.
The three U.S. airlines have said in public statements that their decisions on Israel are tied solely to the security threats posed to their crews and passengers. United and Delta briefly resumed flights to Tel Aviv in June, but then suspended them in August in the wake of the assassination of Hamas’s political leader, Ismail Haniyeh, in Iran—an attack Tehran blamed on Israel and vowed to avenge.
The Iranian military and its proxies launched a barrage of missiles and drones at Israel in April in response to an Israeli strike on an Iranian compound in Syria. But they were almost all intercepted by Israel, U.S., European, and Arab air defenses. The Israel Defense Forces and Pentagon remain on high alert for another Iranian reprisal.
At present, Delta says its flights remain canceled through October 31; American Airlines cites March 2025 as a potential resumption date; and United Airlines says its services to Israel remain on hold indefinitely. “Our flights to Tel Aviv remain suspended—we look forward to resuming flights as soon as it’s safe for our customers and crew,” a United spokesperson told The Free Press.
American declined to comment and Delta said it is “continuously monitoring the evolving security environment and assessing our operations based on security guidance and intelligence reports and will communicate any updates as needed.”
This travel ban has forced Americans needing to go to Israel to either pay higher El Al fares or find more time-consuming routes through Europe. One U.S. defense expert who needed to meet Israeli security officials in Jerusalem this month to discuss the Iranian threat told The Free Press it took weeks to arrange a flight. No seats on El Al flights were available, and he eventually went via Paris on Air France. “It’s stunning how hard it was to get there,” he said.
Still, the outspokenness of a number of U.S. airline unions against travel to Israel has raised concerns among members of Congress and the Israeli government that politics may also be factoring into the flight ban.
A day after the October 7 attack, the president of the Allied Pilots Association, Captain Ed Sicher, ordered the union’s 16,000 members to refuse any requests from American Airlines to fly to the Jewish state. “As noted in APA’s initial update yesterday regarding the safe evacuation of working American Airlines crewmembers from Tel Aviv, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has announced that the country is now ‘at war.’ The Israeli security cabinet weighed in today, declaring that the country is in a ‘state of war,’ ” he wrote APA members. “Until further notice, if you are scheduled, assigned, or reassigned a pairing into Israel, refuse the assignment by calling your Chief Pilot or IOC Duty Pilot.”
In February, the Association of Flight Attendants-CWA joined six other major American unions in calling for a formal U.S. ban on military supplies to Israel until Netanyahu agrees to a cease-fire with Hamas. “It is clear that the Israeli government will continue to pursue its vicious response to the horrific attacks of October 7 until it is forced to stop,” reads the statement from the AFA-CWA and six other unions. The spokeswoman for the AFA-CWS, Taylor Garland, has also regularly posted and reposted items on social media demanding a Gaza cease-fire and criticizing the military tactics of the Israel Defense Forces.
Garland and the AFA-CWA declined to respond to numerous requests from The Free Press to comment on Israel and whether the organization backs a U.S. flight ban if the Netanyahu government doesn’t agree to a cease-fire with Hamas. Other airline unions, trade associations, and pilots, however, downplayed the idea that politics were driving decisions, but rather cited security and basic economics. A number noted that insurance costs for the U.S. carriers rise in conflict zones, while the overall demand for flights decrease. Also, the length of U.S. flights to Israel require overnight stays for American pilots and crews, something that’s not normally an issue for European or Middle East carriers.
“Our number one concern as pilots, no matter where we’re flying—it doesn’t have to be to Tel Aviv, it can be to Toledo—it’s got to be safe and secure,” said Dennis Tajer, spokesman for the APA. “We didn’t make that call, but American Airlines did. Oftentimes, they will bring in a third layer, and that’s commercial interests.”
One pilot from a major U.S. carrier told The Free Press he regularly signs up to fly to Tel Aviv when the ban appears set to be lifted. But then the airline again cancels, following a new security assessment. “It hurts us financially, but the decision is really down to our security department,” said the airman.
The suspension of U.S. flights to Israel has contributed to a broader shock to the Israeli economy since the war with Hamas erupted last October. Israel’s calling up of 360,000 reservists after the Hamas attack, roughly 4 percent of the population, has placed a particular strain on the economy. The country’s growth contracted 1.4 percent during the second quarter of 2024 from the year earlier, according to Israel’s Central Bureau of Statistics, and its exports of goods and services dropped 8.3 percent. The Israeli economy experienced a double-digit contraction in the months directly following the Hamas attack.
“Aviation has a big impact on our country because we’re like an island,” said Professor Nicole Adler, dean of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem’s Business School. “I know that we have Syria and Egypt and so on around us. But most traffic is coming in via airlines, and it’s very sad that this war has gone on for as long as it has.”
Since October, Iran and its proxies across the region have made no secret of their desire to constrict international trade and passenger traffic going into and out of Israel. According to Iranian officials, this will both drain Israel’s economy and impose a psychological toll on the broader populace.
Much of Tehran’s efforts have centered on the Red Sea, where the Iranian-backed Houthi militia has launched hundreds of attacks on tankers and other maritime vessels transiting through the Suez Canal—some on their way to Israel. Just this month, the Yemeni militants launched six missile strikes on international maritime traffic, including on Panamanian- and Saudi-flagged oil tankers.
On Sunday, the Houthis successfully launched a long-range missile at central Israel for the first time. Israeli defense officials said their air defense system largely destroyed the projectile, though some fragments landed on agricultural land and near a railway station.
This, combined with the reduced air traffic, has prompted self-congratulatory comments from Iranian officials, including Ayatollah Khamenei, that their multifront war against the Jewish state is working. Since becoming Iran’s Supreme Leader in 1989, the 84-year-old cleric has made clear that the path toward liberating Palestine will be achieved as much through making Israel unlivable to its Jewish residents as through open warfare.
“Four million people will leave Israel. [This means] reverse migration,” Khamenei told a television audience during a June 3 speech marking the death of the Islamic Republic of Iran’s founder, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini. “In other words, the level of perplexity, confusion, and panic among Israeli officials has reached this degree. Pay attention to this! This is very important!”
Jay Solomon is an investigative reporter for The Free Press and author of The Iran Wars. Follow him on X at @jaysolomon, and read his last piece “How Close Is Iran to the Bomb?”
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