El Al Ends Flights to Cairo
El Al said it is discontinuing its weekly flights to Cairo.
In a letter published Sunday in the daily Maariv, El Al Airlines CEO Eliezer Shkedi said Israel’s official airline cannot afford the high security and operating costs for the nearly empty flights, according to news reports.
The airline declined comment. Irena Etinger, spokeswoman for Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman, confirmed the letter.
The letter, addressed to Lieberman, did not say when the flights would end.
Under the 1979 peace accord, the two countries agreed to provide flights. Foreign Ministry spokesman Yigal Palmor said if El Al cancels its service, another airline must provide Cairo flights, according to The Associated Press.
A message from our CEO & publisher Rachel Fishman Feddersen
I hope you appreciated this article. Before you move on, I wanted to ask you to support the Forward’s award-winning journalism during our High Holiday Monthly Donor Drive.
If you’ve turned to the Forward in the past 12 months to better understand the world around you, we hope you will support us with a gift now. Your support has a direct impact, giving us the resources we need to report from Israel and around the U.S., across college campuses, and wherever there is news of importance to American Jews.
Make a monthly or one-time gift and support Jewish journalism throughout 5785. The first six months of your monthly gift will be matched for twice the investment in independent Jewish journalism.
— Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO
