On April 17, a month after the announcement of the inauguration of a new airport, Ben Gurion Airport-Sharm el-Sheikh, the first flight of Arkia and Israir from Israel is scheduled to take off. The tickets have already been sold and the excitement is at its peak. They have also visited Egypt in recent days to regulate the issue of flight security.
Meanwhile, plans to operate dozens of flights a week to a destination that could be very interesting for Israelis have been scrapped. In the first phase, the three Israeli airlines will be allowed to operate a total of 9 weekly flights on the route. An additional 9 will be allocated to Egyptian companies. With the announcement of the possibility of operating direct flights on the route, Arkia announced that it would operate 14 flights a week (two daily flights), and Israir announced that it would operate 15 flights a week. Of the three Israeli companies, El Al has not yet included flights to Sharm in its booking systems after waiting for approval to operate the flights. The Disneyhouse company, which plans to operate four flights a week through Air Cairo as part of vacation packages (charter), has not yet started selling.
It should be noted that the GSS trusts the security of the flights of Israeli airlines. From every airport in the world from which the companies take off, the issue of security is regulated by Israeli security guards and local representatives. The countries are in talks to operate the lines in accordance with a protocol to be determined by the GSS. The one who implements the issue of flight security is EL AL’s security department, with the state financing 97.5% of the security costs of Israeli companies.
Israeli companies are rightly afraid of discrimination that will allow Egyptian airlines to operate flights on the route while they will not be able to enjoy the demand to fly to Sharm. On the long-launched route to Bahrain, only Bahrain’s national airline, Gulf Air, is currently operating when Israir’s plans to join the route are still not possible in the absence of a security clearance for the Caymans. Even on routes to Turkey, Israeli companies can not enjoy the high demand, since for years they have not been allowed to operate flights on the route where only the Turkish companies operate. This time, in order to allow fair competition, the flights on the route to the Egyptian companies will not be allowed until the activities of the Israeli companies have been regulated.