Turkish Airlines cuts capacity to Israel

Turkish Airlines have cancelled their 15:30 scheduled daily flight and have moved the passengers from this flight to their three other daily flights.   The company operates 21 flights a week to Israel.  According to Moris Kant, the decision to cancel the flight was taken for commercial reasons as a result of the global economic crisis and the tension between the two countries that led to a tourist boycott from the Israeli side.

 "We hope that the situation will recover quickly" he said in a conversation with Educational; explaining that "throughout January we clung on with our fingernails, but we decided to cancel one flight rather than fly an empty plane".  Kant also reported the efforts of the Turkish hoteliers to encourage Israelis to visit Turkey by requiring them to pay only for the flight, in the hope that the Israeli boycott will finish quickly.

He added "I can certainly understand why Israelis are afraid to travel to Istanbul, but Antalya is a different area altogether and there is no reason to be worried.

When questioned on the reaction of the head office in Istanbul react to the response by Israelis, he replied "While Turkish Airlines is government company, it is managed entirely as a commercial enterprise and does not intervene on political issues in countries that it operates in.

He added that the company's connecting flights from Israel had also been negatively affected, however business traffic continues to operate as normal.