Scandinavian Airline (SAS) announced last Monday it would end its service to Tel Aviv, as well as Moscow and Ankara, due to ’increasing costs and competition.”
The carrier currently runs four weekly flights between Tel Aviv and Copenhagen, and has stated that it is refocusing services on new long- and short-range routes in Europe and America.
SAS has been operating direct, weekly flights between Tel Aviv and Copenhagen since June 2012 and it would cease in March 2016.
The company said that the Tel Aviv route was expensive to operate in “stiff competition,” and that there had been reduced crew availability for the night flights, which leave Copenhagen at 10:45pm and arrive in TLV in the early morning hours, before returning to Copenhagen.
The company added that their office in Israel would continue to function as usual, including providing services and selling tickets.
The company claimed that although the Tel Aviv-Copenhagen route has seen a nearly 41% increase in passenger traffic during 2014, including 25% increase up until July of this year, it needed to suspend all summer schedule flights due to a number of technical reasons.
The company said that the Tel Aviv route was expensive to operate in “stiff competition,” and that there had been reduced crew availability for the night flights, which leave Copenhagen at 10:45pm and arrive in TLV in the early morning hours, before returning to Copenhagen.
“For this reason, we had to reduce the amount of night flights from Copenhagen to Tel Aviv in the summer of 2015, in light of their increased success,” a company spokesman said. “Flights will resume their usual schedule in the winter 2015-16, when the flights will take place during the daytime hours (departing Copenhagen at 8:30am and leaving Tel Aviv at 3pm. The day flights will not be available during the summer of 2016.”
