All the news about Israeli tourism

According to the data from the Israel Airports Authority, during August a total of 1.46 million passengers passed through Ben Gurion Airport on 9,906 international and internal passenger flights. International passenger traffic during the month stood at 1.42 million passengers, an increase of 6 percent compared to August 2008. Since the start of the year passenger traffic to Turkey fell by 39 percent.

Passenger traffic to Turkey continues to stabilize. During August 2008, a total of 180,000 passengers flew to and from Turkey, this constituted 12.6 percent of all activity at Ben Gurion Airport.  Compared to previous months, the decline in traffic to Turkey was only 13.8 percent. Antalya Airport was the main destination for arrivals and departures with 125,000 passengers.

Nevertheless in August, just like July, the largest increase in passenger traffic recorded, compared to August 2008 was Greece. It should be noted that August 2009 will be remembered as having had the greatest volume of activity of all time. Internal and regional traffic shot up by 40 percent.  The Israeli airlines during the month flew 600,485 passengers, an increase of 7.8 percent compared to last August.  El Al traffic grew by 12 percent.

The data from the Airports Authority also revealed that of the leading airlines operating at Ben Gurion Airport during the month, the largest increase in operations was recorded by Alitalia, up by more than 20 percent as a result of an additional weekly flight to Milan, Lufthansa an increase of more than 20 percent thanks to additional flights to Munich and Sky Airlines from Turkey with a 17 percent increase.

The American airlines, Continental and Delta, recorded increases of 4 percent and 12 percent respectively; while US Airways flew 14,000 passengers during August, while continuing to increase its market share.  British airline bmi continued to grow and flew about 2,000 more passengers than British Airways.