Citing mounting security and operational expenses, Israel’s El Al Airlines plans to stop its weekly flights to Cairo.
The airline has been making the regular run to Egypt since the the 1979 peace treaty was signed by both countries.
In a letter published in Maariv, El Al’s CEO Eliezer Shakedi explained, "Operating the flight route to Cairo and maintaining the necessary infrastructure for that requires a large amount of security and operational resources, and heavy economic expenditure which amounts to hundreds of thousands of dollars annually…Without any commercial justification and in light of the high economic cost of operating this line, El Al cannot continue to bear these heavy expenses, and therefore is intending to stop operating the route to Cairo immediately."
And, due to the less than stellar ties Israel shares with Egypt’s new Islamic President Mohammed Morsi, there’s a good chance that the flights will never make a comeback.
"Any element of normalization between the two countries that is stopped, simply won't be reinstated," said an Israeli foreign ministry source.
