El Al Israel Airlines will be operating this summer with the “highest load factor” of any airline flying over the Atlantic, David Schneider, general manager of the company in North and Central America said today.
Speaking at a press conference at El Al’s office here, Schneider said that El Al is expecting at least an average of 80 percent occupied seats in the company’s flights during the months of May, June and July. He pointed out that in April the company operated on an unprecedented 92 percent of capacity.
Schneider said that El Al will be carrying to Israel this summer about 60,000 American passengers. He predicted that if the current situation continues “El Al will be breaking even in about 18 months.”
Noting that El Al, which resumed its full schedule of flights last March 6, is “strictly a Sabbath observer now,” Schneider said that this poses a tremendous “economic challenge” for the company. “We are not operating at least on one-sixth of our operating capacity.” But he said that El Al’s high load factor makes up “for the financial problems resulting from not flying on the Sabbath.” He noted that the ban of Sabbath flights increased considerably the number of Orthodox Jews who fly with El Al.
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The Archive of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency includes articles published from 1923 to 2008. Archive stories reflect the journalistic standards and practices of the time they were published.
