Direct Flights Between Tel Aviv and Seoul Resume

After two years of taking cumbersome alternative routes, people will once more be able to take advantage of direct flights between the Israeli capital Tel Aviv and Seoul, the capital of South Korea.

There will be three flights in a week taking the route and it will be operated by the largest airline in South Korea called Korean Air.

The route

The route will be operated by the airline on Monday, Wednesday and Friday, with passengers traveling from the Ben Gurion Airport in Israel to the Incheon International Airport in Seoul and vice versa.

As far as the duration of the flights is concerned, they are expected to take as long as ten hours. The expected price of the tickets was outlined by a press release from Korean Air for the year.

The price of the round-trip tickets will start at $1,075 for the months of January and February, but it will rise to $1,540 per ticket, or more from March and the price will hit its peak in April in time for Passover.

The price is expected to reach $1,920, before coming down in August to $1,075 and once more go back to $1,540 during the Sukkot season.

Tourism

For most of the previous decade, the route between Tel Aviv and Seoul had remained open, with almost 200,000 passengers traveling between 2016 and 2020 before it was shut down due to the pandemic.

According to Air Korea, the flight route had been taken by 61,000 passengers in 2019 alone. In August, Yoel Razvozov, the Tourism Minister, had met with Kim II-soo, the Korean Ambassador.

He had noted after the meeting that reopening the route would give the tourism industry of Israel a boost, which had taken a severe hit during the pandemic.

He said that they were opening flight lines to market Israel, as this would increase tourism and help the country in connecting to the world.

In that regard, Israel recently announced flight routes for the next year to Japan, Australia and Ireland and it is also expected that direct flights to Atlanta will once more be offered by Delta Airlines.

Delta Airlines had shut down the route due to the pandemic, but it is expected to resume from March next year.

Israel and South Korea

Both South Korea and Israel have been taking steps recently to improve their business relationships, after free trade agreement was ratified and went into effect in December.

A representative of Korean Air in the country said that the flight route had already generated a lot of interest in Israel, especially due to the rising trade between the two countries.

They said that the demand was high amongst companies that plan trips to the country. Likewise, businessmen and entrepreneurs have also shown an interest because they want to develop their businesses.

This would be possible thanks to the free trade agreement signed between the two countries.

Airovation Technologies is a climate-tech company in Israel that signed a memorandum of understanding with Kolon Industries from South Korea back in October.