British Airways joins others in cancelling Tel Aviv flights

British Airways announced on Sunday it would cancel its flights between London and Tel Aviv until Wednesday due to rising tensions in the Middle East, joining other carriers in cutting services to Israel and Lebanon.

“We have made an immediate decision to suspend our flights to and from Tel Aviv until Wednesday, August 28th,” a company spokesman said, calling safety “the company’s top priority.”

British Airways said it had contacted its customers to advise them of “travel options”.

Several other airlines have announced the suspension of their flights to destinations such as Beirut or Tel Aviv due to the escalation of gunfire between Israel and Lebanese Shiite militia group Hezbollah on the border between Lebanon and Israel.

Hungarian low-cost airline Wizz Air also announced a “temporary suspension” of its flights between Luton Airport, near London, and Israel “due to the escalating situation in the region”, the British news agency PA reported.

Wizz Air did not specify how many days the suspension would last.

For its part, Virgin Atlantic said it would extend the suspension of daily flights between London Heathrow and Tel Aviv following a “safety assessment”.

The airline, which was supposed to resume flights on September 5, postponed this date to the 25th of the same month.

Regular flights by Air France, Transavia, Emirates, Etihad, Qatar Airways, Jordanian Airlines, Aegean Airlines, as well as some charter flights to Beirut International Airport and Ben Gurion International Airport in Tel Aviv were also suspended.

In the case of Air France, the decision to suspend was taken “at least” until next Monday, after which a new decision will be made taking into account the situation, the company said in a statement.

Europe’s main airline, Germany’s Lufthansa, announced on Friday that it would extend the suspension of flights to Beirut until Sept. 30 and to Tel Aviv and Tehran until Sept. 2.

This Sunday, Hezbollah launched retaliation for the killing of its top commander Fuad Shukr by launching hundreds of rockets and drones into northern Israel, after nearly a month of tensions and with the two countries on the brink of open war.

The Lebanese force (backed by Iran) ended the operation “for today” and said it was the “first phase” of a response to the death of Shukr, who was injured in an Israeli bombing of a building in a southern suburb of Beirut.

Hezbollah’s retaliation came after 72 hours of intense Israeli bombing of several locations in Lebanon, which it called pre-emptive strikes.

The crisis between Israel and the Lebanese group is at its highest level since 2006, with daily gunfire in the border areas of the two countries since the start of the war in the Gaza Strip, triggered by an unprecedented attack by the Palestinian Islamist group Hamas on Israeli soil on October 7, 2023, which left about 1,200 people dead and more than two hundred hostages taken.

In response, Israel launched a large-scale offensive in the Gaza Strip that has already resulted in the deaths of more than 40,000 people, mostly civilians, and a humanitarian catastrophe destabilizing the entire Middle East region.