During an official visit from the Kingdom of Bahrain to the State of Israel, a memorandum of understanding was signed at the Hilton Tel Aviv by Gulf Air Chairman, H.E. Mr. Zayed R. Alzayani and EL AL’s Chairman, Mr. David Brodet, launching a historic collaboration.
On Thursday (December 3, 2020), Gulf Air, the national carrier of the Kingdom of Bahrain announced the signing of an historic memorandum of Understanding (MOU) with Israel’s national carrier EL AL at a signing ceremony at the Tel Aviv Hilton. The MOU was signed during an official visit of the Kingdom of Bahrain to the State of Israel and launches a historic collaboration between the two airlines. Gulf Air plans on launching twice-weekly service to Tel Aviv from January 7, 2021, pending government approvals. The MOU and flight announcement follow the normalization of relations between the Kingdom of Bahrain and Israel. In Thursday’s announcement, Gulf Air’s Chairman of the Board of Directors, His Excellency Mr. Zayed R. Alzayani, said,
“We are delighted to announce the launch of Bahrain – Tel Aviv route as part of the historic initiation of Bahraini – Israeli relations. As the national carrier of the Kingdom of Bahrain; we take great pride in supporting our leadership and Kingdom in their role of preserving peace and prosperity in the region. We hope this is merely the beginning of developing further aviation opportunities and look forward to work with our friends at EL AL and support each other to achieve bigger goals. We trust this new route will promote traffic providing commercial and social gains for both countries, while paving the path for numerous connections to the rest of our networks via the two destinations.”
Also commenting on the historic collaboration, EL AL’s Chairman of the Board of Directors, Mr. David Brodet added,
“The opportunity to explore potential cooperation with Gulf Air is a direct result of the changes taking place in the region. We at EL AL look forward to seeing how we can offer our passengers new and exciting options – it goes well beyond just the flights but with expanding in areas of cargo, maintenance and travel technology with EL AL’s Cockpit innovation hub. I welcome H.E. Mr. Alzayani to Israel and look forward to visiting Bahrain in the future.”
The comprehensive MOU is just the start of the partnership which may potentially include codeshared operations between Manama and Tel Aviv and on the global flight networks beyond the carriers’ hubs. Additionally, the airlines will explore further commercial collaboration in areas such as loyalty, cargo, engineering, travel technologies and other areas which will benefit the airlines and their guests. Gulf Air launched their first historic flight to Israel last month which carried the Kingdom’s delegation headed by Bahrain’s Foreign Minister, H.E. Abdul Latif Al Zayani which inaugurated the new flight code GF972 and return flight GF973, representing the international dialing area codes of both countries.
Source: Gulf Air