An Etihad Airways Boeing 787-9 “Dreamliner” aircraft displays Israeli and Emirati flags after landing upon arrival from the United Arab Emirates (UAE) at Israel’s Ben Gurion Airport near Tel Aviv, on the company’s first scheduled commercial flight from Abu Dhabi, on April 6, 2021.
JACK GUEZ | AFP | Getty Images
Airlines have seen a drop in bookings in the weeks following the start of Israel’s war against Hamas in the Gaza Strip, and some expect it to cut into their future profits.
According to travel analytics firm ForwardKeys, international flight bookings were 20% below 2019 levels in the three weeks following the attack by the Palestinian militant group Hamas against Israel on Oct. 7, and 5 percentage points below the period of three weeks prior to the attack.
The terrorist attack killed some 1,200 people and saw a further roughly 240 taken hostage, triggering the most ferocious Israeli response that the region has ever seen. Israel’s aerial bombing campaign and subsequent ground offensive in Gaza has killed more than 11,000 people, according to health authorities there.
In the days following the attack, major airlines suspended or reduced flights to Israel’s Ben Gurion Airport in Tel Aviv. But air travel demand to and from other countries and regions was noticeably affected, too.
In the three week period before Oct. 7, ticket issuance from the Middle East was just 3% below 2019 levels, according to ForwardKeys data, illustrating the steady recovery of the sector from the Covid-19 pandemic. In the three week period after Oct. 7, by contrast, ticket issuance from the Middle East was 12% lower than 2019 levels, marking a difference of 9 percentage points.
But the biggest drop in terms of international departures was in flight ticket issuance from the Americas, which was actually up 6% from 2019 levels in the three weeks before the attack, and fell to 4% below those levels in the three weeks after, totaling a drop of 10 percentage points.
International arrivals to the Middle East meanwhile plunged by 26 percentage points in that time frame, with the biggest drops by country being Israel, followed by Saudi Arabia, Jordan, and Lebanon. ForwardKeys draws its data from the International Air Transport Association’s industry-wide ticketing database which includes major international carriers, but does not include budget airlines like easyJet or Ryanair.
Stateside, at least one major airline made a profit warning concerning the war.
United Airlines in mid-October said…
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