For the past seven years, Lufthansa,  Germany’s national airline, has been the largest foreign carrier serving Israel.  

Lufthansa offers 14 weekly flights to Israel. [Sheldon Kirshner photo]

Lufthansa – which started flying to Israel 40 years ago come November – wrested that honour away from British Airways a year into the second Palestinian uprising, said Lufthansa’s communications manager in Israel, Tal Muscal, in an an interview in Tel Aviv last month.  

As tourism to Israel plummeted with the eruption of the intifadah in September 2000, foreign airlines reduced their service to Ben-Gurion Airport.

Lufthansa, a global airline that flies to 192 destinations in 78 countries, including 20 North American gateways, resisted the trend.

“We took a calculated risk to continue our flights to Israel,” said Muscal, a former Jerusalem Post reporter who covered aviation and tourism.  

“We’ve stayed in Israel during difficult times,” noted Muscal, saying that Lufthansa continued flying to Tel Aviv during the 1991 Gulf War, when Iraq fired 39 Scud missiles at Israel.

Although it was a late comer to the Jewish state, commencing service on Nov. 3, 1968, three years after Israel established diplomatic relations with what was then West Germany, Lufthansa has become a major force in Israel’s vital tourist industry.

Today, Lufthansa offers 14 weekly flights from Frankfurt to Tel Aviv, seven morning flights using an Airbus 340-300 and a daily afternoon flight using a Boeing 747-400.

The 31/2-hour flight to and from Israel does not serve pork, and the menu in the business class section is printed in German, English and Hebrew.

“We carry about 1,600 people to and from Israel every day,” said Muscal, noting that Lufthansa’s market share currently stands at 4.2 per cent.  

El Al, Israel’s national carrier, is the premier airline serving Israel, with a market share varying from 37 per cent to 40 per cent.

By contrast, Continental is the largest American airline servicing Israel.

Air Canada is absent from the list of the top-10 airlines flying to and from Israel, said Muscal.

Last year, Lufthansa carried 402,000 passengers to Israel, compared to 366,600 in 2006, 363,000 in 2005 and 361,000 in 2004.

Last month, Lufthansa and CAL, the Israeli credit card company, launched a credit card for frequent flyers.

In its first year of operation, when it offered a grand total of two weekly flights to Israel, Lufthansa carried 1,200 passengers to Ben-Gurion Airport.

Since then, Lufthansa has flown some eight million passengers between Germany and Israel.

“For us, the 40th anniversary of our operations in Israel is a real milestone,” said Muscal. “When you look at our growth, it’s a real success story. It’s a   profitable route for us and one we are trying to expand.”

Last November, Lufthansa requested permission from the Israel Civil Aviation Authority to resume flights from Munich to Tel Aviv.

The route was suspended in 2003 following a drop in German tourism to Israel, Muscal said, adding that Lufthansa plans to restart it once Israel and Germany sign a new aviation agreement.

Three years ago, Lufthansa hired a manager to expand incoming tourist and business traffic to Israel from its worldwide gateways. The person in question, Uri Amiram, began his career at Lufthansa’s Jerusalem office in 1987.  

“We’re the only foreign airline with a manager who encourages tourism to Israel,” said Muscal.

According to his figures, approximately 20 per cent of tourists using Lufthansa fly to Israel from its gateways outside Europe, and more than 60 per cent of its passengers on Israel-bound flights are non-Israelis.

In 2000, one of Israel’s best years for tourism, some 250,000 Germans visited Israel, much to the benefit of its economy and its pivotal relationship with Germany.

Muscal said that, in promoting Israeli tourism, Lufthansa continually brings travel agents, tour operators and journalists to Israel.

From the outset, Lufthansa has tried to serve as a bridge between Israel and Germany, fully recognizing that Germany’s central role in planning and implementing the Holocaust still casts a giant shadow over German-Jewish relations.

With this in mind, Lufthansa has sponsored many cultural events in Israel. It has flown the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra to Tel Aviv and enabled the Pina Bausch dance company from Wupperal, Germany, to perform in Israel.

Lufthansa also sponsored a Marc Chagall exhibit at the Israel Museum in Jerusalem and funded an exhibition of the works of Alfred Eisenstadt, the German-born father of photo-journalism whose photographs graced the pages of Life magazine.

As well, Lufthansa has supported environmental projects in Israel, funding the satellite tracking of migrating cranes, Lufthansa’s corporate symbol.

Each year, an estimated five million cranes fly over Israel’s Hula Valley on the way to Europe and Africa.

One of the world’s largest airlines, Lufthansa flies out of its hub at Frankfurt airport, which recently inaugurated a new passenger handling area between concourses C and D in terminals 1 and 2.

Frankfurt airport, a gleaming maze of interconnected buildings, has the only airport synagogue in Europe, according to Lufthansa.

Located in Terminal 2, opposite gate D4, the shul, with blue wall-to-wall carpeting, 16 chairs, a table with a brass menorah and a few prayer books on a shelf, is open 24 hours a day. It is close to Christian Orthodox, Protestant, Catholic and Muslim prayer rooms.

Sheldon Kirshner flew with Lufthansa from Toronto to Israel via Frankfurt. Between flights, he stayed one night at the Sheraton Hotel at Frankfurt Airport.