SAS will drop its year-round flights to both Moscow and Tel Aviv and will also discontinue its seasonal flights to Ankara, Danish website Check-In.dk reported. The airline will also drop its 2-4 weekly flights to Tel Aviv, having resumed the Israel route in 2012 after a ten-year absence. The final Copenhagen to Tel Aviv flight is scheduled for March 2016.
“Tel Aviv is an expensive route to operate in stiff competition and we don’t have a sufficient profitability to keep it. We can also see that political instability is affecting the routean SAS spokesperson told check-in.dk. But in Tel Aviv a company source told Ynet that “Flights are suspended due to the political instability affecting the flight line.”
SAS and its rival carrier Norwegian both temporarily grounded all their fights from Copenhagen to Tel Aviv last summer after a rocket landed near Ben Gurion International Airport.
The same spokeswoman also said that the SAS Moscow route has struggled, as Russia deals with a ruble crisis and Western sanctions over its aggressions in Ukraine.
But the news from SAS isn’t all bad, as the airline announced new direct flights to Boston, Krakow, Reykjavik and Vienna.
At least as long as nothing there goes unstable.