Effective from November 27 this year, national carrier, Air Seychelles will be operating a direct flight service that links the country and Tel Aviv, Israel’s largest metropolitan area. The new weekly service will be operated on Wednesday evenings from Seychelles with the returning flight departing Tel Aviv a week later.
The service will be operated by the airlines’ new Airbus A320neo aircraft Veuve, S7-VEV of 12 Business Class and 156 Economy Class seats scheduled to be delivered by the end of July. Lasting for 6 hours and 20 minutes, the flight has been carefully timed to provide business and leisure traveller’s convenient connections over Seychelles to Mauritius, Johannesburg, and Mumbai.
“Seychelles is considered as a safe and secure destination for Israeli’s hence the once per week service will enable us to open up the Seychelles market, evaluate and develop the destination further,” Chief Financial Officer of Air Seychelles, Michael Berlouis said.
Tel Aviv is known for its thriving metropolis with a vibrant shopping and nightlife experience, located on the Mediterranean coast. While nearby Jerusalem is famous for its life-changing pilgrimage tours around the Holy land. For people planning to extend their holidays or business trips to other destinations, flight connections from Tel Aviv provide the most direct and fastest ways to reach Europe or even the United States from Seychelles.
On the economic impact of the new route, Berlouis said the creation of the first-ever air corridor between Seychelles and Tel Aviv will strengthen business, tourism and cultural ties between the two countries. In addition, it will boost traffic and onward connections to other destinations across the carrier’s network.
The CFO explained that the airline has taken a very cautious approach by partnering with tour operators in Tel Aviv to guarantee the profitability of the year-round business. The partnership will see them secure the majority of seats to be sold from Tel Aviv as one or two weeks packaged holidays in the Seychelles and Mauritius.
More so, Air Seychelles is expecting to gain significant volumes of traffic from the European market once it has established the agreement with EL AL Airlines – the flag carrier of Israel. The national airline is adding the Israeli carrier to its list of interline partners as part of its network expansion. It is looking to provide onward connections to over 20 destinations across Europe via the Ben Gurion International Airport.
