Torres says US airlines are boycotting Israel by suspending direct flights, FAA remains silent

The US airline industry is implementing what a Democratic member of Congress calls an effective boycott of Israel, suspending all direct flights in the wake of the October 7, 2023 terrorist attacks.

More than a year after the Hamas attacks, as the war between Israel and Iran-backed terrorist groups in the region continues, no major U.S. airlines fly directly from the United States to Israel. Travelers leaving the United States can only take a direct flight to the Jewish state via the Israeli airline El Al. Meanwhile, airlines in Arab countries such as the United Arab Emirates still fly there.

Rep. Ritchie Torres, DN.Y., described this as an effective boycott in a letter to the CEOs of American, United and Delta in August.

“I understand that if you want to travel to Israel, your only option is El-Al, which drives up prices. The lack of availability of air travel from (American airlines) has therefore led to price increases. Israel is much less accessible and affordable for Americans, which is fundamentally unfair,” Torres told Fox News Digital.

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Torres said in his letter that the “lack of competition has made air travel to Israel less available and less affordable, leaving customers at the mercy of a de facto monopoly.”

Fox News Digital reached out to El Al for comment, but they did not immediately respond.

Unlike in 2014, when the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) ordered all US airlines to suspend flights to Israel due to safety concerns during rocket fire towards Tel Aviv, American Airlines, Delta Air Lines and United Airlines have decided on their own to halt all direct flights to make. flights from the US to Israel since the October 7, 2023 attacks, without FAA orders.

Torres said his office has been in discussions with the airlines since August, but he has not received a written explanation of the reasons for halting direct flights to Israel.

“If the FAA were to conclude that it is too dangerous to travel to Israel, then every aircraft would have to submit to the FAA’s safety assessment. The problem is the FAA hasn’t said anything. The silence is deafening,” Torres told Fox. News digital. “If the war ended tomorrow, why would you need to extend the suspension until 2025? And so the suspension of air travel from the United States to Israel is so prolonged and so widespread that it has the practical effect of a boycott. ”

“The American planes have done far more damage to the Israeli economy than the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement against Israel could ever dream of. And I worry without an FAA safety assessment, without an objective process, a dangerous situation.” A precedent has been set for the politicization of air traffic, for the weaponization of air transport as a means to boycott Israel. And it is a powerful tool for a boycott,” Torres said. “In what universe and by what logic is it too dangerous for American Airlines, United and Delta to travel to Israel? But it is safe for UAE airlines to do so? As if there is something rotten in the state of the American aviation industry.”

Torres said he is describing it as an “effective boycott” and not an actual boycott because he cannot speak to the companies’ intentions, but he indicated it is possible the BDS movement could be involved.

“There was a concerted effort by the BDS movement to penetrate every sector, every industry of the American economy in the service of boycotting, divesting and punishing Israel. And so there is no reason to think – it would be naive to think – that the US airline industry is immune to the greater pressures of BDS,” Torres said broadly.

“If you’re going to indefinitely suspend air travel to an American ally like Israel, you owe the public an explanation,” Torres added. “I mean, the United States is home to the largest Jewish population in the world, possibly second only to Israel. So we owe Jewish Americans an explanation as to why (US airlines) have indefinitely suspended air travel to Israel.”

When asked about this, a United Airlines spokesperson simply told Fox News Digital: “Our flights to Tel Aviv remain suspended – we look forward to resuming flights as soon as it is safe for our customers and crew.”

The statement did not elaborate on why the flights were suspended.

“Delta continuously monitors the evolving security environment and assesses our operations based on security guidance and intelligence reports and will communicate updates as appropriate,” a Delta spokesperson told Fox News Digital. El Al is a Delta partner airline.

The FAA said in a statement to Fox News Digital that it “has not ordered airlines to suspend flights to Israel.”

“The airlines make their own independent decisions regarding flight schedules based on, among other things, their operating safety and security risk assessments,” an FAA spokesperson said. “The Notice to Air Missions (NOTAM) reflects the Israeli government’s warning.”

Fox News Digital also reached out to American Airlines but did not hear back.

After seeing Torres’ letter, Anat Alon-Beck, a business law professor at Case Western Reserve University School of Law, told Fox News Digital that she investigated whether there was an attempt to “mislead stakeholders, shareholders and regulators.” regarding the US airlines’ true motivations for suspending direct flights to the Jewish state.

“Is it really a safety issue, or are there other motivations, for example political bias? Is there any bias coming from administrators, from management, perhaps from radical union pressure?” said Alon-Beck. “So I really don’t know what’s going on. And we have a responsibility to look at that because companies have fiduciary obligations. And if companies suffer financial losses, if shareholders are affected, then companies in those situations could potentially be liable for damages if there really is no disclosure of what’s going on.”

The professor said she is evaluating whether there is anti-Semitic pressure causing discrimination against Israel.

“And if that’s the case, then we have anti-BDS laws, we have other laws, and companies really need to consider profit motivation and not subject themselves to political pressure,” she said. “And so our intention is really to monitor the behavior of companies and hold them accountable.”

Mark Goldfeder, CEO of the National Jewish Advocacy Center, told Fox News Digital that he has seen “airline unions include BDS initiatives in their bargaining agendas, clearly resulting in abusive practices and coercion, for example in terms of our conversations.”

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“The union has used BDS-related demands to pressure the management of certain airlines to change flight routes or suspend business relationships or to revise operational policies regarding Israel. And that coercion undermines management’s authority and forces decisions based on political agendas rather than legitimate commercial issues. considerations,” Goldfeder said, without specifying which unions he was referring to.

As Torres noted in his letter, Goldfeder agreed that “it is of course appropriate for airlines to suspend service based on safety concerns as defined by the FAA,” but the current situation “was imposed by the airlines themselves without any order or directive of the US Department of State or the Federal Aviation Administration.”

“At this time we cannot say with certainty that the airlines are definitively discriminating against Israel as a matter of policy,” Ben Schlager, senior advisor at the National Jewish Advocacy Center, told Fox News Digital. “What we do know is that the airlines are facing enormous pressure within their own organizations regarding Israel and routes to Israel. That comes from labor, which comes from their employees, and that is reflected in their treatment of passengers and their treatment of Hebrew-speaking and Jewish employees of these airlines.”

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“It is certainly fair at this point to ask the question about the exceptionality of the Israeli flight exclusion, whether these two cases are related,” Schlager added. “Ultimately, it doesn’t benefit anyone because the only people who are most affected are obviously passengers and shareholders. And it’s already proven that, at least for some of these airlines, this is a costly decision for their shareholders.”