47.0°,
Fair For refugees or paying passengers, first class service to Israel
By Jewish Star Staff
Issue of Dec. 12, 2008 / 15 Kislev 5769
El Al, which celebrated 2008 as its 60th year, began almost by accident.
In September 1948, Israel’s new government wanted a classy way to fly its newly-designated president, Chaim Weizmann, from Switzerland back to Israel, according to an account prepared by historian Marvin Goldman, author of two books about the airline’s history.
A four-engine C-54 was taken from the air force inventory and painted with the name ‘El Al’ and the words ‘Israeli National Aviation Company.’ The tail was painted with an Israeli flag. Extra fuel tanks for the 10-hour flight, an air force crew and in-flight meals from a local kosher restaurant rounded out the package, and Weizmann and his entourage were met at an air force base near Rechovot by a military band playing “Hatikvah.”
By the next month El AL Israel Airlines was incorporated with the Israeli government as the majority shareholder. The new carrier’s primary mission was, and remains, to “secure and maintain a regular civil air link between Israel and the outside world in times of war and peace.”
The airline also committed to arrange emergency flights on 12 hours notice to rescue Jews from hostile countries. Over the years El Al aircraft and crews have operated dozens of such flights to bring Jews home to Israel from around the world.
The first, Operation Magic Carpet in January 1949, airlifted nearly 50,000 Jews from Yemen and elsewhere on the Arabian Peninsula to Israel. At its peak, Magic Carpet involved eight flights a day filled with Jews who kissed the tarmac in Israel after their flights “on eagle’s wings.”
The even more massive Operation Ali Baba in 1950 and 1951 rescued 113,000 Jews from persecution in Iraq.
All the while, El Al was operating trans-Atlantic flights between Tel Aviv and Idlewild Airport, now JFK. The flights were charters at first; scheduled service began in 1951.
Beginning with the outbreak of the Sinai War in October 1959 El Al began a pattern that was to recur a number of times when Israel went to war: foreign airlines immediately cancelled all flights into and out of Israel, but El Al continued to operate passenger flights, maintaining the link to the outside world, as its charter requires.
El Al turboprops set a number of aviation records over the years. The airline entered the jet age in 1961 with the first flight of its new Boeing 707s, and established three world records in the process, including the world’s longest non-stop commercial flight. In 1971 the first two El Al 747s represented the largest investment Israel had every made in a piece of equipment, costing nearly $35 million each.
When Israel was attacked on Yom Kippur in 1973, El Al began ferrying home Israelis from around the world. The airline’s 707s were gutted and emergency cargo service began, with crews logging an average of more than 12 hours of flight a day for more than two weeks.
Business class was introduced in the early 1980s.
Operation Exodus began on New Year’s Day in 1990. After years of struggle and protest hundreds of thousands of Jews began to leave the Soviet Union for Israel.
In May 1991, El Al’s Operation Solomon rescued 15,000 Jews from Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, including three babies born in flight with the help of doctors and flight attendants. One flight, on a specially configured 747, carried 1,087 people, an aviation record.
El Al became a private airline in 2004 though it maintains its role as Israel’s national carrier. It was that role that led to a controversy over its status as the world’s only Shomer Shabbat airline. A compromise was reached with chareidi rabbonim who organized a short boycott. There still are no scheduled flights on Shabbos, though preparatory work clearly does take place.
El Al adds flights around Jewish holidays, which in some years makes it virtually the only way to get to and from Israel before and after Sukkot and Pesach.
Sleek new Boeing 777s were added to the fleet last year, and El Al charters have become part of the rite of passage for many North Americans making Aliyah with the Nefesh B’Nefesh organization.
El Al reports annual revenues of nearly $2 billion dollars.
