El Al Boeing 737-800 at Zurich International Airport
Yesterday, El Al announced that they will be selling three of their Boeing 737-800s and will eventually lease them back to the airline. This is to ease the financial pressure the airline is experiencing at the moment. The specific airframe that they are selling to haven’t been confirmed. However, they were apparently built in 2009.
Due to the travel ban and the coronavirus pandemic, the airline has decided to suspend all scheduled flights. As a result they have grounded their entire fleet. This consists of 12 Boeing 787-9s, 3 Boeing 787-8s, 15 Boeing 737-800s, 8 Boeing 737-900s and 6 Boeing 777-200ERs. This brings their total commercial fleet to 44 aircraft.
The airline has been operating some very interesting flights recently. They have been using their Boeing 787 aircraft to transport 45 tonnes of eggs! El Al has been using 5 of their Boeing 787 aircraft to operate flights to Portugal to combat supermarket shortages as a result of the Passover holiday. They transported 3.3 million eggs from Portugal to the flag carrier’s nation!
Since the travel ban has been opposed in the country by the Israeli Government, there has been a large reduction in flights. There has been a big demand to try and keep supply chains operational. Therefore, the airline has joined other carriers by using passenger aircraft to operate cargo flights.
However, the nature of these flights is what makes them so fascinating. According to Times of Israel, El Al will be operating five flights from Europe to Tel Aviv to transport eggs! Between these five flights they will carry approximately three million eggs to Israel. These operations will go to Lisbon, Portugal and Kiev, Ukraine. According to FlightRadar24, it appears that four of these flights have already gone underway. The airline has used 2 of their Boeing 787-9 aircraft registered, 4X-EDC and 4X-EDE. Two flights left Lisbon on the 6th of April while another two left Portugal on the 15th of April. It is unknown when the last flight to Kiev will take place. Eggs have been ordered from Spain, Portugal, Italy and Ukraine along with 30 million eggs being shipped to the nation by sea as the country faces a great shortage of eggs.
How does the airline transport such fragile items? Well, they are securely loaded into a hold and onto passenger seats. They also hope for a non-turbulent flight so that they don’t crack! According to a video posted on Twitter by Carmel Libman, it appears that the eggs are being stacked in trays, put into boxes with styrofoam, secured with two sets of plastic wrap and are attached to wooden slates.
Taken from FlightRadar24
El AI retired their Boeing 747s last year. Many airlines around the world are using this aircraft to carry out their cargo flights. KLM even brought two of these retired aircraft back into service to operate these types of flights. El Al started operations with the Boeing 747-400 back in 1994. However, they had multiple different variations of the aircraft over the years. It’s first ever Boeing 747 was a -200 series back in 1971. The last Boeing 747-400 registered 4X-ELC, flew from Rome to Israel’s Ben Gurion Airport operating flight 1747 on the 3rd of November 2019. In honour of this aircraft, they drew a Boeing 747 in the sky while operating this flight. It is a pity to see that this brilliant aircraft that served the airline for 48 years has gone.
However, the airline is now using the Boeing 787 to operate their cargo flights. Yesterday, El Al Boeing 787-9 in ‘City of San Francisco’ livery touched down in Dublin. The aircraft operated flight LY303 from Tel Aviv (TLV/LLBG) to Dublin (DUB/EIDW) to transport PPE equipment after 5 hours in the sky. This is to help Ireland fight this Coronavirus pandemic. The aircraft later operated flight LY303 to London Heathrow (LHR/EGLL) before heading back to Tel Aviv (Flight LY318) again.
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