El Al (Hebrew: אל על , "To The Skies" or "Skywards") (El Al Israel Airlines Ltd) (TASE: ELAL) is the national airline of Israel. It operates regular international passenger and cargo flights between its hub at Ben Gurion International Airport and destinations in Africa, Asia, Europe, South America, and North America, as well as domestic connections to Eilat.
Since its inaugural flight from Geneva to Tel Aviv in September 1948 the airline has grown to serve 48 destinations on four continents. As the national carrier of Israel, El Al has played an important role in Israel's humanitarian rescue efforts, airlifting Jews from Ethiopia, Yemen, and other countries where their lives were at risk. The airline holds the world record for the most passengers on a commercial aircraft, a record set by Operation Solomon when Jewish refugees were transported from Ethiopia. El Al is widely acknowledged as the world's most secure airline, after foiling many attempted hijackings and terror attacks through its security protocols.
History
Early years
In September 1948 Israel's first president, Chaim Weizmann, attended a conference in Geneva, Switzerland. Weizmann was scheduled to fly back to Israel in a government aircraft, but due to an embargo imposed on Israel at the time, this was not possible. A C-54 military transport aircraft was instead converted into a civilian plane to transport Weizmann home. The aircraft was painted with the El Al/Israel National Aviation Company logo and fitted with extra fuel tanks to enable a non-stop flight from Geneva to Israel. It departed from Ekron Air Base on 28 September, and returned to Israel on 30 September. After the flight, the aircraft was repainted and returned to military use.
The airline was incorporated and became Israel's official carrier on 15 November 1948, although it used borrowed aircraft until February 1949, when two unpressurized DC-4s were purchased from American Airlines. The acquisition was funded by the Israeli government, the Jewish Agency, and other Jewish organizations. The first plane arrived at Lod Airport on 3 April 1949. Aryeh Pincus, a lawyer from South Africa, was elected head of the company. The first international flight, from Tel Aviv to Paris (refueling in Rome), took place on 31 July 1949. By the end of 1949, the airline had flown passengers to London and Johannesburg. A regular service to London was inaugurated in the middle of 1950. Later that year, El Al acquired Universal Airways, which was owned by South African Zionists. A state-run domestic airline, Israel Inland Airlines, was founded in which El Al had a 50% stake.
El Al's cargo service was inaugurated in 1950 and initially relied on military surplus C-46 aircraft. The same year the airline initiated charter services to the USA, followed by scheduled flights soon afterwards. From its earliest days the operation of the airline in keeping with Jewish tradition has been a source of friction; when the Israeli prime minister David Ben Gurion was forming his first coalition, the religious parties would not join unless Ben Gurion promised that El Al would serve only kosher food on its flights and would not fly on the Jewish Sabbath.
As the national carrier, the airline was involved in several covert operations. In the early 1950s, El Al airlifted over 160,000 immigrants to Israel from India, Iran, Iraq and Yemen as part of Operation Magic Carpet and Operation Ezra and Nehemiah. In 1960, Nazi war criminal Adolf Eichmann was captured and flown from Argentina to Israel on an El Al aircraft.
In 1955, after using Lockheed Constellations for several years, the airline purchased two Bristol Britannia aircraft. El Al was the second airline in the world to fly this plane, after the British Overseas Airways Corporation. In 1958, El Al ran a newspaper advertisement in the US featuring a picture of a "shrunken" Atlantic Ocean ("Starting Dec. 23, the Atlantic Ocean will be 20% smaller") to promote its non-stop transatlantic flights. This was a bold step: the airline industry had never used images of the ocean in its advertising because of the widespread public fear of airline crashes. The advertisement, which ran only once, proved effective. Within a year, El Al's sales tripled.
Expansion in the 1960s
Despite the purchase of its Britannias and inauguration of non-stop transatlantic flights the airline remained unprofitable. When Efraim Ben-Arzi took over the company in the late 1950s, the Britannias were replaced by the Boeing 707 jet airliner. The first year that El Al turned a profit was 1960. That year, more than 50 percent of the passengers flying into Israel arrived on El Al flights. On 15 June 1961, the airline set a world record for the longest non-stop commercial flight: an El Al Boeing 707 flew from New York to Tel Aviv, covering 5,760 miles (9,270 km) in 9 hours and 33 minutes. By this time El Al was carrying 56,000 passengers a year — on a par with Qantas and ahead of established airlines like Loftleidir. In 1961, El Al ranked 35th in the world in the number of accumulated passenger miles. El Al's success continued into the late 1960s. In 1968, regular flights to Bucharest were inaugurated, and cargo flights began to Europe and the USA. The airline also established a catering subsidiary, Teshet Tourism and Aviation Services Ltd. All these ventures brought in a profit of $2 million that year.
Hijacking
In 1968, El Al experienced the first of many acts against the airline. On 23 July, the only successful hijacking of an El Al aircraft took place, when a 707 carrying 10 crew and 38 passengers was taken over by three members of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP). The aircraft, El Al Flight 426, was en route from Rome to Lod. The hijackers diverted it to Algiers. Bargaining with the hijackers went on for 40 days. Both the hijackers and the passengers, including 21 Israeli hostages, were eventually freed.
On 26 December of the same year, two PFLP members attacked an El Al aircraft at Athens Airport, killing an Israeli mechanic. The Israeli Defense Forces responded on 29 December with a night-time raid on Lebanon's Beirut Airport, destroying 14 planes on the ground belonging to Middle East Airlines, Trans Mediterranean Airways and Lebanese International Airways.
On 18 February 1969, Palestinians attacked an El Al plane at Zurich Airport killing the copilot and injuring the pilot. One Palestinian attacker was killed and others were convicted but later released.
Between September and December 1969, bomb and grenade attacks occurred at El Al offices in Athens, West Berlin, and Brussels.
This wave of violence culminated in the failed hijacking of an El Al 707 by Patrick Arguello and Leila Khaled on 6 September 1970, as part of the Dawson's Field hijackings.
1970s and 1980s
El Al acquired its first Boeing 747 in 1971. Many felt it was a risky purchase, given the high cost of the plane and fear of attacks, but El Al operations flourished after the purchase. Another 747 was delivered in 1973 and was used to inaugurate non-stop service from Tel Aviv to New York. In the air for 13 hours, and flying against prevailing winds, it was recorded as the longest commercial flight in the world.
In the mid-1970s, El Al began to schedule flights from airports outside of Israel that departed on the Jewish sabbath and landed in Israel after it had finished. The religious parties in the government claimed that this was a violation of Jewish law and contrary to the agreement signed in the early days of the state, in which El Al promised to refrain from flying on the sabbath. In 1981, the newly re-elected prime minister Menachem Begin, promised to abide by the agreement. Outraged, the secular community threatened to boycott the airline. In August 1982, El Al workers blocked Orthodox and Hassidic Jews from entering the airport.
In 1977, El Al established a charter subsidiary then known as El Al Charter Services Ltd., but later renamed Sun D'Or International Airlines Ltd. Two years earlier, the airline had suffered its first losses since the late 1950s, largely a product of the global recession. The management changed three times towards the end of the 1970s, until Itzhak Shander was named president. As the political situation in Iran deteriorated, El Al began to airlift Jews to Israel. All the airline's infrastructure in Iran was eventually destroyed. El Al flights to Cairo were inaugurated in April 1980, following the Israel-Egypt Peace Treaty.
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El Al (Hebrew: אל על , "To The Skies" or "Skywards") (El Al Israel Airlines Ltd) (TASE: ELAL) is the national airline of Israel. [2] [3] It operates regular international ...
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