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Aviation History
1967
1967 - 0014.PDF
16 f"LIGHT International, 5 January 1967 Airline Profile NUMBER TWENTY-NINE IN THE SERIES ISRAEL AIRLINES By DARYL MAY TO JOHANNESBURG The African route on which circumnavigation of the Arab States involves for El Al a fight of twice the distance of a direct Tel Aviv-Nairobi service POLITICALLY SPEAKING, Israel is an island. Her neighbours—Lebanon, Syria, Jordan and Egypt—are all hostile. Socommunication can only be by sea and air. But, by sea, Europe and America are long slow voyages away. Israel's dependence on air transport is massive. But if this dependence is massive in peacetime, it would be even more so in time of war. In war, it is almost certain that every foreign airline now serving Israel would stop operations. Communications would then not be a choice between a slow sea voyage and an airline —'but rather a choice between a slow, dangerous sea voyage ... and El Al. There are two stories that bring El Al to the present. Some people might call them epics. El Al's origins are in Israel's roots; the airline was incorporated under the laws of the new State of Israel on November 15, 1948. The words El Al, freely translated from Hebrew, mean 'To the Skies," or "Onward and Upward." The majority shareholder is the Government; other shares are held by the Jewish Agency, the state-owned ZIM Shipping Company and the Histadrut Federation of Labour. Scheduled operations from Tel Aviv to Rome and Paris began in mid-1949; in the following year the airline added Athens, Zurich, Vienna, London, Johannesburg and New York. Nicosia, Istanbul, Brussels, Amsterdam, Copenhagen, Teheran, Frankfurt and Munich were added later. These early years were ones of improvisation and hardship. Building successfully from nothing has become a habit in Israel, but who can say it is any the easier as a result? DC-3s, C-46s, DC-4s and Constellations were used—and used, un- fortunately, when other airlines had DC-6s and Super Constel- lations. In these years El Al struggled to provide links for Israel to the rest of the world; to transport immigrants, to develop tourism, to export agricultural and industrial products. The first chapter ends in 1957. Less than ten years from its inception, El Al had "arrived" as a carrier with a wide inter- national network. The second chapter begins. Under Gen Ephraim Ben-Arzi, the airline moved to update its equipment; it ordered four Britannias and began what one El Al official described as "a mutually successful romance." With Britan- nias, El Al could advertise that it had "reduced the Atlantic A part of El Al's fleet on the apron at Lod, with one of the airline's two Boeing 72OBs in the foreground
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