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Israeli
national airline to halt Cairo flights
CBS,
17
September, 2012
Israel's
national airline, El Al, plans to stop flying to Cairo because it
says planes on that route have been virtually empty. Israelis, and
tourists at large, are afraid to travel to Egypt because of street
violence and instability, and the route has become unprofitable since
the Egypt's Arab Spring uprising began more than a year ago.
Politically,
the flights between Cairo and Tel Aviv are a symbol of the two
nations' 33-year-old peace treaty. But now, El Al says keeping the
route operational simply doesn't make economic sense.
"Operating
the flight route to Cairo and maintaining the necessary
infrastructure for that requires a large amount of security and
operational resources, and heavy economic expenditure which amounts
to hundreds of thousands of dollars annually," El Al CEO Eliezer
Shakedi said in a letter to Israel's Foreign Ministry.
"Without
any commercial justification and in light of the high economic cost
of operating this line, El Al cannot continue to bear these heavy
expenses, and therefore is intending to stop operating the route to
Cairo immediately," added Shakedi.
El
Al flies between Tel Aviv and Cairo once a week and is the only
carrier operating direct flights between the two cities.
The
airline's plan to ground that flight poses a dilemma for the Israeli
government because the Tel Aviv-Cairo route is one of the few
elements of normalized relations left between the countries in the
wake of Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak's ouster.
Since
Mubarak, an Islamist-led government headed by President Mohamed Morsi
has risen to power. Morsi is a member of the Muslim Brotherhood, a
group that has been traditionally hostile toward Israel, though thus
far, Morsi has said his government will honor existing treaties.
The
government cannot force El Al to fly to Cairo because it no longer
controls the airline, which is now a privately held. Since Israel
wants to save what is left of the peace treaty, officials say that if
El Al drops the route, another airline will have to replace it.
But
peace comes with a price. The bottom line is that if the Tel
Aviv-Cairo route keeps operating, the Israeli government will have to
subsidize, if not foot the bill.
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