Germany’s Tel Aviv Air eyes late 3Q21 launch

Tel Aviv Air (Hamburg Helmut Schmidt) plans to begin operations on the Hamburg Helmut Schmidt-Tel Aviv Ben Gurion route on September 19, 2021, using a B737-800 chartered from Poland’s Enter Air (E4, Warsaw Chopin).

The German virtual carrier initially intends to operate the route 2x weekly on a year-round basis. While it said that ticket sales would launch in mid-July, as of July 23, 2021, they remain unavailable.

Tel Aviv Air was founded by Shlomo Almagor, an Israeli travel entrepreneur, and Paul Scodellaro, formerly a sales manager for Germania (ST, Berlin Schönefeld). They are targetting a broad spectrum of customers, including business travellers, tourists, and the Jewish diaspora.

Enter Air, which operates twenty-four B737-800s and two B737-8s, used to have a base in Tel Aviv. While it has been closed, the carrier continues to operate a significant number of flights to Israel on behalf of its tour operator customers using aircraft based out of Europe.