Unlike Delta Air Lines and United Airlines, American Airlines hasn’t operated a flight to Israel in over two years, and hasn’t announced plans to resume these flights. However, there’s a hint that this might be changing…
American hiring Hebrew speaking flight attendants
It’s normal for airlines to hire flight attendants who speak the languages for the destinations they serve, given that there need to be a minimum number of “language speakers” on each flight. Along those lines, the always observant JonNYC flags how American is now hiring Hebrew speaking flight attendants.
That’s in addition to flight attendants speaking Czech, Dutch, Greek, Hungarian, and Italian, all of which makes sense, given that they represent destinations that American serves or intends to serve.
So we’ll see what comes of this, but with there now being a ceasefire (let’s see how things evolve, though, from a security standpoint), this seems like the right time for American to start thinking about resuming flights to Israel.
American has taken a different strategy than Delta and United during the war, as Delta and United kept operating flights when it was possible, and then suspending flights when it wasn’t possible. It’s hard to say which strategy was better. On the one hand, Israel can be a lucrative market for airlines. On the other hand, when you can’t operate service reliably, the economics are challenging, since network planning is a long term project.
American’s interesting history flying to Israel
Prior to the pandemic, American didn’t fly to Tel Aviv at all. Now, predecessor US Airways did fly there until 2013, but those flights were discontinued when the merger happened.
However, in May 2021, the airline launched a New York to Tel Aviv route, and then in June 2021, American launched a Miami to Tel Aviv route. Then in June 2022, American was supposed to launch a Dallas to Tel Aviv route, but that never ended up materializing, due to delays with new aircraft deliveries (or so American claimed).
It’s weird, because for some time, it looked like American was going to become a real competitor in Israel. But then we saw American cut its Miami to Tel Aviv route in March 2023 (before the war started), and also continue to push back its Dallas to Tel Aviv route, before just suspending it indefinitely.
So I have to imagine that if American is going to return to Tel Aviv, New York is the most likely airport out of which that service would be offered. After all, it seems like there can never be enough capacity between those two markets. Then again, I was shocked when American couldn’t make Miami to Tel Aviv work, since you’d think that would be a strong market.
In terms of the competitive landscape:
- United has historically been by far the strongest US carrier in Israel, and has operated by far the most service
- Delta has operated a limited amount of service to Israel for a long time, but also has a relatively new partnership with EL AL, which has a lot of potential (I have to imagine there will eventually be an investment from Delta)
- American doesn’t have either of those advantages, but it is part of the oneworld transatlantic joint venture, and no other airline in that joint venture flies between the United States and Israel
Bottom line
American Airlines is currently hiring Hebrew speaking flight attendants, which sure suggests that American is likely planning a return to Israel. The airline has had quite the interesting few years with Israel service. The carrier only started flying to Israel in 2021, then planned to add two more routes, but quickly cut one of those routes, and never launched the second route.
I have to imagine that a New York to Tel Aviv flight will return sooner rather than later. To what extent American serves Israel the next time around remains to be seen.
How do you see American’s Israel strategy evolving?
