El Al
El Al Israel Airlines Ltd., trading as El Al is the flag carrier of the State of Israel. Since its inaugural flight from Geneva to Tel Aviv in September 1948, the airline has grown to serve almost 50 destinations, operating scheduled domestic and international services and cargo flights within Israel, and to Europe, the Middle East, the Americas, Africa, and the Far East, from its main base in Ben Gurion Airport.
El Al is the only commercial airline to equip its planes with missile defense systems to protect its planes against surface-to-air missiles, and is considered one of the world's most secure airlines, thanks to its stringent security procedures. Although it has been the target of many attempted hijackings and terror attacks, there has only been one El Al flight hijacking in history, which ended without any loss of life. As Israel's national airline, El Al has played an important role in humanitarian rescue efforts, airlifting Jews from other countries to Israel, setting the world record for the most passengers on a commercial aircraft by Operation Solomon when 14,500 Jewish refugees were transported from Ethiopia in 1991.
In 2012, El Al operated an all-Boeing fleet of 42 aircraft, flying over 4 million passengers, and employed a staff of 6,056 globally. The company's revenues for 2016 were $2.04 billion, with losses of $81 million, compared to a profit of $57 million in 2010. In 2018, the company's revenue was $7.7 billion, with a net loss of $187.55 million. In July 2020, having lost hundreds of millions of dollars due to grounded flights and lay-offs as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic in Israel and abroad, the company reached a bailout deal with the government, and Eli Rozenberg, who purchased a controlling stake in September of that year, with the government purchasing any unwanted shares. El Al offers only kosher in-flight meals, and does not fly passengers on the Jewish Shabbat or religious holidays.
History
1948–1949: Foundation
In September 1948, Israel's first president, Chaim Weizmann, attended a conference in Geneva, Switzerland. Weizmann was scheduled to fly back to Israel in an Israeli government aircraft, but due to an embargo imposed on Israel at the time, an Israeli C-54 military transport aircraft was instead converted into a civilian plane to transport Weizmann home. The aircraft was painted with the logo of the "El Al/Israel National Aviation Company" 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 the next day. After the flight, the aircraft was repainted and returned to military use.The airline was incorporated and became Israel's national flag carrier on 15 November 1948, although it used leased aircraft until February 1949, when two unpressurized DC-4s were purchased from American Airlines. The acquisition was funded by the government of Israel, 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, with refueling in Rome, took place on 31 July 1949. By the end of 1949, the airline had flown passengers to London and Johannesburg. A state-run domestic airline, Israel Inland Airlines, was founded in 1949 in which El Al had a 50% stake.
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 and would not fly on the Jewish Sabbath. El Al was named by David Remez, the first Minister of Transport, based on Hosea 11: "They call El Al."
1950s: Adding cargo service and destinations
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.El Al's cargo service was inaugurated in 1950 and initially relied on military surplus Curtiss C-46 Commando aircraft. The same aircraft type was used also for passengers transportation in certain routes. The same year, the airline initiated charter services to the United States, followed by scheduled flights soon after.
From 1950 to 1951, El Al expanded its activities in Europe and added new destinations such as Vienna and Istanbul, Athens and Nicosia. On 31 July 1950, the company celebrated the first anniversary of its regular flight program.
The airline was involved in several covert operations: In the early 1950s, El Al airlifted over 160,000 immigrants to Israel from 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 United States featuring a picture of a "shrunken" Atlantic Ocean 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.
1960s: Turning profitable
Despite the purchase of its Britannia and the 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 in the next decade by the Boeing 707 and Boeing 720 jet airliners.File:OrlyAirport1965-Boeing707-EL-AL.jpg|thumb|El Al Boeing 707 at Orly Airport, Paris
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 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 Loftleiðir. In 1961, El Al ranked 35th in the world in accumulated passenger distance. 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 United States. 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 attempts
In 1968, El Al experienced the first of many acts of terrorism that have been perpetrated against the airline. On 23 July, the only successful hijacking of an El Al aircraft took place, when a Boeing 707 carrying 10 crew and 38 passengers were taken over by three members of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine. The aircraft, El Al Flight 426, which was en route from Rome to Tel Aviv, was diverted to Algiers by the hijackers. Negotiations with the hijackers lasted 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 International Airport, killing an Israeli mechanic. The Israeli Defense Forces responded to the incident 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. The military action was responsible for the demise of the LIA, which had most of its fleet destroyed.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 of that year, 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: Going Boeing
El Al acquired its first Boeing 747 jet 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 Boeing 747 was delivered in 1973 and was used to start non-stop service from Tel Aviv to New York.EL AL passengers and passengers from other airlines were attacked at Lod Airport in 1972 in an attack known as the Lod Airport massacre.
In the mid 1970s, El Al began to schedule flights from airports outside of Israel that departed on the Jewish shabbat and landed in Israel after it had finished. However, the religious parties in the government were outraged by this change believing that it 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 1982, the newly re-elected prime minister Menachem Begin, brought before the Knesset a vote to ban Sabbath flights once again. Outraged, the secular community threatened to boycott the airline. In August 1982, El Al workers blocked Orthodox and Hasidic Jews from entering the airport.
In 1977, El Al established a charter subsidiary, El Al Charter Services Ltd., 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.