Red Sea Redux

One of the most visible benefits of the 2020 Abraham Accords was the opening of Saudi and Omani airspace to Israeli airlines.  This unlocked a huge latent market for Israel.  Traffic between Tel Aviv and Dubai, Abu Dhabi, and Manama (Bahrain) peaked at as many as 200 weekly flights.  But also critical was the opening of a shortcut across Arabia to India and Southeast Asia.  Bangkok flights were reduced by 2.5 hours compared to the pre-existing route down the Red Sea and Gulf of Aden.  

Israeli airlines have suspended the "new route" eastbound over Saudi Arabia and Oman

With the outbreak of war in 2023, Israeli airliners withdrew from the shorter path over Saudi Arabia and Oman and resumed flying the longer route down the Red Sea.  Security and operational concerns drove this decision.  Specifically:

• The entire Persian Gulf region became an active war zone replete with missiles, drones, and military aircraft.  While specifics of the no-fly recommendations evolved with developments, the general guidance from regulators was to avoid the entire area and redirect overflight to the north through the Turkmenistan - Azerbaijan – Armenia corridor or south over Oman, Saudi Arabia, and Eqypt.

  
  

• The northern route, used by Israeli airlines for destinations in Central and East Asia, remained open.  But that’s a long detour for flying to Southeast Asia.

  
  

• The problem could be easily resolved if Oman would permit a more southerly course over its airspace.  While the approved routing follows established airways over the Muscat Flight Information Region (FIR) and remains outside of Iranian airspace, it was deemed too close for comfort.  Along with the military risks (missiles, drones, aircraft, accidental shootdowns) the standard operational considerations of driftdown, weather, mechanical and operational diversions pose too great a risk.   So far, the Omani government has not budged.  Muscat has taken a harder line against Israel since the war started, and there are no signs that it will back down anytime soon.  

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  First flight to Bangkok over the Saudi-Omani Corridor. El Al 83, 2.26.23 (Flightradar24.com)

  

  The more southerly track over the Gulf of Oman is flown daily between Muscat and Mumbai. September 2026 (Flightradar24.com)

• Since returning to the Red Sea route, the flight path is actually longer than before.  Israeli airlines are now avoiding the Bab el Mandeb area completely by overflying Ethiopia before turning east over Somalia and exiting Africa over the Indian Ocean coast, bypassing the Gulf of Aden entirely.  This provides a buffer from the other active war zone of Yemen, in which the same military and operational concerns apply.

The new, longer Red Sea Route, overflying Ethiopia and Somalia. El Al 84, BKK-TLV, 9/28/26. (Flightaware.com)

So what are the financial and operational consequences of all this?   First and foremost, longer flight times – about 11.5 hours westbound and 10.5 hours eastbound on the TLV-BKK sector.  Total flight round-trip flight time 22 hours, plus two hours of turn time, for a total of 24 hours round-trip block time.  That’s compared to 17 hours using the Oman shortcut, which annualizes to 1800 additional hours.   That’s a lot of time that the airplane is not available to operate other missions.  The impact to El Al is higher aircraft utilization – out of necessity – but lower effective aircraft availability.   Whether those additional 5 hours could be leveraged into the schedule is an open question, given complexities of fleet routing, maintenance schedules, crew scheduling, and so on. It is certainly a drag on productivity and higher effective utilization.  

The cost of those additional 5 hours of flight time, using a rough average of $15K/hour variable operating costs, totals $75K. Spreading that over a load-factor-adjusted 260 passengers, the per-passenger cost is $288.  

And yet, demand remains robust.   El Al and Arkia are operating 17 weekly widebody flights to Bangkok and four to Phuket.  That’s about 4800 seats each way.   In fact, for El Al, the Thai market ranks second only behind the U.S. in weekly ASMs (19,800), and TLV-BKK ranks third overall by city pair, after JFK and EWR.  A quick view at fare data shows that the economy fares are priced between $1500-$1900, which, even with the current high cost of fuel, builds in sufficient to cover the additional $300 or so cost per passenger.

There is competition.  Etihad offers one-stop connections through Abu Dhabi with fares available for under $1000.  That El Al and Arkia can demand such a non-stop premium speaks to a) the loyalty of the Israeli travelers (whether it be for positive attributes of these carriers or for pragmatic issues around flying over countries hostile to Israel) – and the desire to avoid connecting flights. 

The same factors bode well for El Al’s Manila service, scheduled to start sometime in 2027.   Flights to Hanoi were to begin in October this year, but have been put on hold pending the resolution of security arrangements with the Vietnamese.  Arkia has already started service to Hanoi. Flights operate over the northern Armenia-Azerbaijan-Turkmenistan-China route. 

Arkia's Hanoi-Tel Aviv service operates over the northerly route. September 2026. (Flightrader24.com)

El Al and Arkia have not only adjusted to the current realities but are gearing up for expansion in Southeast Asia.  Competition is limited, but will ultimately ramp up, putting downward pressure on fares (Air India is expected to restart DEL-TLV flights in December).   But there seems to be a near-unlimited demand from passengers, a good percentage of whom are willing to pay more for non-stop service. Israeli airlines need to make hay while the sun is high