Travel Operations

What changed since the last cycle (19 September)

Status board — where every gateway stands this morning

All times are from the IAA Yom Kippur notice of 17 September 2026 (Hebrew Ben Gurion notifications index) unless stated. Read this as the resumption ladder: the sequence in which each facility came back, and what is already running as you plan today.

Land crossings — Tishrei 2026 timetable (remaining dates, 22 September – 3 October)

Source: Israel Airports Authority, “Opening Hours of Border Crossing Terminals during Tishrei Holidays 2026”, linked from the land-crossings notifications and updates page in English and Hebrew; re-checked 22 September. The English and Hebrew tables were reconciled in the 19 September cycle and nothing has changed since. P = passenger terminal. All times local. Times in brackets are last entry. Allenby, Jordan River and Yitzhak Rabin are Jordan crossings; Menachem Begin is the Taba crossing to Egypt. Standing conditions from the PDFs: arrive at least 3 hours before an early closing time, and at Jordan River passengers are accepted until 90 minutes before closing.

Conservative planning envelope. The two language versions of the PDF agree, but they are right-to-left and left-to-right renderings of one table, so for the days that carry the most risk plan against the earliest time any crossing shows. On 25 September and 2 October, plan Allenby and Jordan River exits on the Friday half-day: last entry 14:30 at Jordan River, closing 15:30 at Allenby, and remember the three-hour arrival rule at Allenby, which means being on site by 12:30. On 26 September and 3 October, Yitzhak Rabin (08:00–20:00) and Taba are the only open land exits. The 22–24 September row is drawn from each crossing’s standard IAA hours page, because the holiday table does not list those days.

Cargo, in summary (same PDFs): all cargo terminals are closed on each festival day and eve in the window. During Chol HaMoed, Allenby cargo runs 08:00–17:00/18:30 and Jordan River 08:30–18:00, with intake until 16:00 and import handling until 18:00. Yitzhak Rabin runs 08:00–18:00 and Nitzana (Egypt) 08:00–17:00. Yitzhak Rabin cargo standard hours are Sun–Thu 08:30–15:30.

Four things in the next eleven days that will break itineraries

1. Today, Tuesday 22 September, is the single most congested day of the fortnight. Three things land together. It is one of the IAA’s four designated September peak days at about 100,000 passengers and about 600 flights. It is the first full operating day after a day and a half with no flights, so displaced traffic is being absorbed on top of that. And it is the first day since 14 September on which private vehicles can drive out to Jordan at Jordan River and Yitzhak Rabin. Expect simultaneous queues at Ben Gurion and at both the northern and southern Jordan crossings. Build a 3.5-hour minimum connection at Ben Gurion today and add an hour to any land transfer estimate.

2. The resumption ladder is still working through the system this morning. Ramon and Haifa only came back at 06:00, Terminal 1 at 02:00 and Terminal 3 at 22:30 last night. Rail restarts today with no published first-train time for the airport station. Anything you book in the first half of today rests on a system that has been running for a few hours, not a few days. Reconfirm every 22 September domestic connection and every early airport rail transfer directly.

3. Friday 25 September combines the second IAA peak day with Erev Sukkot. Ben Gurion is forecast at about 100,000 passengers on the same day that Allenby closes at 15:30, Jordan River at 16:00 with last entry at 14:30, and rail and intercity buses wind down through the afternoon. It is the worst single day of the period for a land transfer to Jordan combined with an evening flight. Move Jordan transfers to Thursday 24 September or to Yitzhak Rabin.

4. Two full festival Saturdays close most of the land network. On 26 September and 3 October, Allenby and Jordan River are closed and there is no rail. Only Yitzhak Rabin (08:00–20:00) and Taba (24h) are open. For moving groups to Jordan during Sukkot, Yitzhak Rabin is the default routing and the other two crossings are the exceptions — which in turn makes Eilat the staging city and Eilat rooms the scarce resource.

Crossings — standard hours, eligibility and vehicle rules

Allenby vehicle and exit documentation (carried from prior IAA reads): international driving licence; vehicle registration in the driver’s name or a notarised power of attorney in English or Arabic; English translation of the vehicle registration. To exit: passport valid six months and a Jordanian entry visa. East Jerusalem residents also need a laissez-passer and ID card. The IAA confirms that no fee is charged on entry to Israel at the land crossings — fees apply on exit only. That confirmation was re-read on the Hebrew land-crossings notifications page today.

Air access — Ben Gurion

The Yom Kippur window is closed and documented (IAA notice, 17 September 2026, Hebrew Ben Gurion notifications index; Tier A). For the record, and as the template for the next festival stop: activity halted in stages on the eve and resumed at the end of the fast. Terminal 1 took its last departure at 13:00 and its last domestic landing at 13:10 on 20 September. Terminal 3 took its last international departure and last international landing at 13:55. Resumption: T3 first international landing 22:30 and first international departure 23:30 on 21 September; T1 open for international and domestic activity from 02:00 on 22 September; Ramon and Haifa from 06:00 on 22 September. Our 19 September guidance — treat the window as a no-scheduled-flights period and reconfirm within 72 hours — was correct, and the notice arrived two days after we last looked. Operating lesson for Sukkot: watch the Hebrew notifications index, not the English one. The English index has carried nothing newer than 24 June 2026 for three months.

No Sukkot aviation notice has been published yet. As of this morning the Hebrew index newest item is the 17 September Yom Kippur notice, and there is nothing for Erev Sukkot (25 September), Sukkot I (26 September) or Shemini Atzeret / Simchat Torah (3 October). ⚠ On calendar grounds expect the same staged pattern on each festival eve and a comparable restart afterwards, but we will not publish Sukkot closing or reopening times until the IAA states them. If the 17 September precedent holds, the notice will appear about three days before the eve — around 22–23 September for Sukkot. Check back on the Saturday cycle.

Holiday-season volumes (IAA notice, 3 September 2026, Hebrew Ben Gurion notifications index; Tier A, re-verified today). More than 3 million passengers are expected through IAA facilities in September: Ben Gurion about 2.5 million, Ramon about 81,000, Haifa about 60,000, and the Jordan and Sinai land crossings about 500,000. Peak days are 10, 17, 22 and 25 September, each at about 100,000 passengers and about 600 flights. Leading destinations: Greece, Cyprus, the USA, Italy and the UAE. The IAA’s advice to passengers: arrive at Ben Gurion three hours before departure, check the departure terminal in advance, check in online at home, print bag tags at self-service stations, use the sector W fast lanes if travelling with hand luggage only, and consider public transport to the airport. Provenance note: we reproduced this notice and every figure directly from the IAA Hebrew index this cycle. It is not a press relay.

Terminal configuration (IAA notification, 24 June 2026; still the newest English-index item on 22 September). Domestic flights use Terminal 1. International departures use Terminal 1 and Terminal 3; T1 international departures started on 1 July 2026. International arrivals use Terminal 3 only. A group may depart from T1 but always arrives into T3, so meet-and-greet and coach marshalling stay at T3. Terminal 3 has Concourses B–E. Area W is the security sector for hand-luggage-only passengers who have checked in online. ⚠ The 2025 “Area G” report is still absent from the IAA page and is not reinstated. Verify the departure terminal per booking, not per carrier — the split is by flight.

Landside. The IAA notification of 1 June 2026 is still current. A dedicated waiting lot offers the first hour free for pickups, and stopping on airport access roads carries a NIS 500 fine. A standing IAA notice (31 July 2025) warns that valet parking is not an official Ben Gurion service. On a peak day like today the free-first-hour lot is the difference between a fined coach and a clean pickup; brief transfer suppliers explicitly.

Traffic and seat supply — latest official data

We checked the IAA activity-reports index again this morning. It still lists January to July 2026 only, so the August report remains unpublished and July is still the newest Tier-A actual. No September actuals have been released, including for today’s peak day. Operating airlines: 47 (IAA notice of 2 August 2026, for the month of August). The 3 September notice carries no airline count and no later notice gives one, so 47 is now a seven-week-old figure and must always be date-stamped. The IAA airline directory is a registry, not an operating count, so do not quote its length.

How to read it. The IAA’s own August and September forecasts, about 2.6m and about 2.5m, are both above July’s actual 2.36m. On official numbers, seat supply across the Tishrei period is running at or above the summer peak. July averaged about 148 passengers per movement, against about 130 for the year to date, which points to more widebody flying and therefore to the 10–20 seat blocks groups need. Carrier concentration (July, IAA): El Al 35.58%, Israir 12.84%, Arkia 11.81% — about 60.2% for the Israeli carriers together. Top destinations were Larnaca (145,379), Athens (140,535) and Dubai (88,848), which maps closely onto the 3 September notice’s Greece / Cyprus / USA / Italy / UAE list. The 22 million figure is an IAA target and must never be stated as fact; the IAA gives Ben Gurion’s design capacity as more than 25 million. The gap to watch is verification, not volume: two of the three September peak days have now passed with no published actual, so the whole month still rests on a forecast.

Carrier route ledger

Every forward date below rests on Tier-B reporting unless marked otherwise. No mapped Tier-A source publishes a route schedule: the El Al site returns no readable content, ch-aviation’s news index renders no articles to us, and the IAA flight board still shows “no search results found”. Treat everything here as a planning signal that needs carrier confirmation before it carries a deposit.

What this ledger now says. New York remains a five-carrier market — El Al, Arkia, United, Delta and Israir — and it is the most important seat-supply change of the season for North American programmes. But two corrections this cycle both point the same way: forward capacity is firmer in the winter and thinner in the autumn than we had it. Israir reaches 6× weekly on 1 December rather than daily in late October, so the October shoulder has less Israir seat supply than planned. Air Canada arrives on 30 November with 4× weekly Toronto, which is genuinely new long-haul capacity but lands in the same window. SAS is the first withdrawal rather than deferral on this page — the useful signal is that a European carrier reassessed and stepped back, so treat every unstarted European restart as reversible until the first flight operates. Tier-B fare reporting (Times of Israel, 7 Sep) still puts holiday-period New York round trips well above off-season levels, with one-way introductory fares around USD 800–950 on Israir and about USD 1,099 on Arkia; Air Canada round trips are reported from about USD 1,200 including checked baggage, and Sundor Marrakesh from about USD 599 round trip. Gulf carriers and easyJet: the IAA directory lists Emirates, Etihad, flydubai, Gulf Air and the easyJet entities as registered carriers — that is registration, not frequency. The UAE is among the IAA’s top five destinations in the 3 September notice, which is a Tier-A signal that the route carries real volume.

Ramon / Eilat

Ramon Airport is Israel’s southern air gateway, with a 3,600-metre runway and a terminal rated for about 1.8 million passengers a year (IAA). The IAA’s 3 September notice forecasts about 81,000 Ramon passengers in September. Ramon resumed operations at 06:00 today after the Yom Kippur stop, per the 17 September IAA notice — which is the only source for that time, because the Ramon notifications page read this morning again says “There are no notifications”.

Israir Eilat PSO (ch-aviation, 31 July 2026, citing the Ministry of Transport). The route is Eilat Ramon–Tel Aviv Ben Gurion, with at least four daily return flights (Israir bid five) on ATR72-500 aircraft. The contract runs from 27 August 2026 for one year, is worth about ILS 40 million, and gives Eilat residents discounted fares and reserved seats.

What it means for operators this fortnight. An ATR72-500 has around 70 seats, so a 30-person group takes a large share of one rotation, and resident seat reservations reduce what is left for sale on peak days. Book group space on Ramon rotations early and split groups over 30 across two departures. This matters most on 26 September and 3 October, when Yitzhak Rabin (Eilat–Aqaba) is the only Jordan crossing open, which concentrates Petra and Aqaba programmes on Eilat at exactly the moment Eilat is also absorbing domestic Sukkot demand. The 06:00 Ramon restart today also means the first Eilat rotations of the week are compressed into a shorter operating day than usual.

Entry and documentation

Since 1 January 2025, all visa-exempt travellers need an approved ETA-IL before arriving in Israel. For ETA applicants the passport must be valid for 3 months beyond the arrival date; for visa-required travellers the carried requirement is 6 months. Travellers apply only on the Population and Immigration Authority portal at israel-entry.piba.gov.il. Warn clients away from commercial look-alike sites, which charge a markup for a NIS 25 authorisation.

Source availability this cycle — worse, not better. Four of our five entry-policy sources returned nothing usable on 22 September. The ETA-IL portal and the PIBA department page on gov.il both served metadata only. The gov.il entry-requirement service pages likewise returned metadata with no body text, so we could not re-read the 8 December 2025 update date we cited on 19 September. The IATA Travel Centre landing page describes the Timatic database but exposes no country-level data. We found no evidence of any change to Israeli entry rules, and no mapped source reports one. But this is now three consecutive cycles in which the entry-policy layer could not be verified from a primary source, which is the weakest evidence position on this page.

Fee, validity and processing time. The ITIH register records an ETA-IL fee of NIS 25, validity of up to 2 years with stays of up to 90 days, and processing of up to 72 hours. ⚠ These values remain unverified. Advise clients to apply at least 72 hours before departure, and for Sukkot arrivals allow a full week, because an application submitted on a festival day may not be processed on that day.

Screening at arrival. No mapped official source shows a published change to entry rules or documentation requirements. Refusal of entry is decided individually at border control, and an approved ETA-IL does not guarantee entry. Brief clients to carry return tickets, itinerary and accommodation confirmations, and to allow extra time on arrival — particularly today, 22 September, and on 25 September, both IAA peak days, and through Chol HaMoed from 27 September when arrival halls run at holiday load.

Ground transport

Rail — the Yom Kippur stop is over and trains restart today. Trains ran an increased schedule until about 13:00 on Sunday 20 September, did not run on Monday 21 September, and resume on Tuesday 22 September. A Times of Israel liveblog timed at 20:08 on 21 September confirmed that buses restarted at the end of the fast while rail would not restart until Tuesday (⚠ Tier B). ⚠ No first-train time for the Ben Gurion airport station has been published anywhere we can read. rail.co.il/en and the Israel Railways holiday-information page both render a JavaScript-only shell. Check the Israel Railways app before committing any airport rail transfer today, and hold a road fallback for the first departures of the morning.

Rail over Sukkot — a dated announcement now exists (Israel Railways, announced 15 September 2026, reported by Kipa; ⚠ Tier B, paraphrased). Israel Railways will run a special Sukkot schedule with reinforcements on the festival eve, at the end of the festival and through Chol HaMoed. The published changes are: two trains an hour instead of one on the Haifa–Tel Aviv line; one train an hour in each direction on the Hadera East–Rosh HaAyin North line; train 8030 departing Beer Sheva Central at 09:41 extended to terminate at Haifa Central rather than Tel Aviv; train 8037 departing Haifa Central at 14:02 extended to terminate at Beer Sheva Central; and Jerusalem Yitzhak Navon–Herzliya night trains running through the week. ⚠ The announcement gives no airport-station times and no last-train times for Erev Sukkot. Israel Railways directs passengers to its site, app or *5770.

Rail — what the calendar dictates. Israel Railways does not run on Shabbat or festival days. That means no rail from Friday 25 September afternoon through Saturday 26 September nightfall, and none from Friday 2 October afternoon through Saturday 3 October nightfall. Rail runs on Chol HaMoed, 27 September to 1 October, at holiday demand levels, which is what the extra Haifa–Tel Aviv and Hadera–Rosh HaAyin frequencies are for. Remove rail from every transfer plan on 25–26 September and 2–3 October and price road transfers in now, while coaches are still available.

Modi’in / Route 431. The one-weekend Modi’in suspension reported on 31 August is long past. We found no further closure announced for the remaining Tishrei window (⚠ the rail source is not directly readable, so this is an absence of evidence rather than a confirmation).

Buses. Intercity and urban bus service resumed nationwide at the end of the fast on 21 September (Times of Israel liveblog — ⚠ Tier B), ahead of rail. The Egged homepage and its traffic-updates page served normally on 22 September but carry no dated Yom Kippur or Sukkot notice; Moovit showed no Israel-specific alert; the Ministry of Transport page returned metadata only. Egged’s reserved-seat intercity booking (Eilat, Be’er Sheva, Tel Aviv, Jerusalem) is the fallback for the Eilat corridor, which feeds Yitzhak Rabin and is the only practical way to stage a Jordan crossing on 26 September or 3 October. Book the 24 and 25 September Eilat departures now, and expect Chol HaMoed loads on every Eilat service from 27 September.

Accommodation supply

On 22 September the Israel Hotel Association site again served navigation, language options and footer only — no member count, no openings or closures, no occupancy data and no dated notices. The figure of about 380 member hotels has now gone unrefreshed for four consecutive cycles (⚠ carried). Treat it as an order of magnitude, not a current count.

Supply signals carried from mapped trade sources (⚠ UNCONFIRMED, Tier B, 15 July 2026): The Yacht on the Herzliya (Fattal, 325 rooms) opened in June 2026, and Kassland Resort & Spa (Ma’ale Adumim, 220 rooms) opened in May 2026. A 260-room Brown Hotel is due in 2028. No new supply announcement appeared in any mapped source in the 19–22 September window.

Analyst read. Central Jerusalem is the binding accommodation constraint for the rest of Tishrei, and it peaks on Chol HaMoed, 27 September to 1 October, when domestic and inbound demand coincide. Eilat is the second pressure point and the more operationally dangerous one, because it absorbs domestic Sukkot demand at the same time as it becomes the compulsory staging point for Jordan transfers: Yitzhak Rabin is the only Jordan crossing open on 26 September and 3 October, and Ramon’s seat supply into Eilat is a fleet of roughly 70-seat turboprops. Secure Eilat rooms now for any Petra or Aqaba programme between 25 September and 3 October, and do not assume a same-week reallocation is possible.

Analyst note for operators

The hardest 72 hours of Tishrei are behind us, and the system came back exactly as the IAA said it would. That is the single most useful thing this cycle produced. The 17 September notice gave a staged shutdown and a staged restart — T3 at 22:30, T1 at 02:00, Ramon and Haifa at 06:00, land crossings at standard hours, Taba four hours earlier than any Jordan crossing — and the Tier-B reporting from the end of the fast matches it. You can now plan the Sukkot and Shemini Atzeret stops against a known template rather than against an assumption, while still waiting for the IAA to publish the actual times.

Today is the compression point, not the relief. Two things that individually stress the system land on the same date: an IAA peak day of about 100,000 passengers and about 600 flights, and the first restoration of private-vehicle exits to Jordan in eight days. Add a rail network restarting from a standing stop with no published airport-station time, and every buffer you would normally rely on is thinner than usual. Today is a day to over-specify, not to optimise: longer connections, earlier crossing arrivals, road fallbacks for rail.

Supply is still moving the right way, but the autumn shoulder is thinner than we had it and the winter is firmer. Two corrections this cycle point the same direction. Israir’s New York ramp reaches 6× weekly on 1 December, not daily by the end of October, so October North American seat supply is lower than planned. Air Canada adds 4× weekly Toronto from 30 November. SAS has cancelled Copenhagen outright. The lesson is that an unstarted route is a forecast, not capacity. Treat every European and North American restart as reversible until the first flight has operated, and keep deposit exposure matched to that.

The verification gap has shifted from aviation to entry policy. The aviation picture improved this cycle: the Yom Kippur notice is published, the 3 September forecast is re-verified directly on the IAA Hebrew index, and the Allenby fax discrepancy is resolved. What did not improve is the entry-documentation layer, where the ETA-IL portal, the PIBA department page, the gov.il service pages and the IATA Travel Centre all returned nothing usable for a third consecutive cycle. The ETA-IL fee, validity and processing time on this page are carried, not verified. That is where a change would hurt operators most and where we would see it last.

Concrete actions, in priority order. (1) Today: build 3.5-hour minimum connections at Ben Gurion, use online check-in, self-service bag tags and the sector W lanes for hand-luggage-only groups, and follow the IAA’s own three-hour arrival advice. (2) Today: expect queues at Jordan River and Yitzhak Rabin on the first day vehicle exits are restored; add an hour to every Jordan land transfer and remember the Jordan River 16:30 admission cut-off. (3) Reconfirm every 22 September domestic and T1 connection directly — T1 reopened only at 02:00. (4) Do not book an airport rail transfer for this morning without checking the app; hold a road fallback. (5) Move Jordan transfers off Friday 25 September, which is a peak day and a half-day at the crossings, to Thursday 24 September or to Yitzhak Rabin. (6) Default Jordan routing to Yitzhak Rabin on 26 September and 3 October, the only Jordan crossing open, and book Ramon rotations and Eilat rooms now, splitting groups over 30 across two departures. (7) Remove rail from all transfers on 25–26 September and 2–3 October; price road transfers while coaches are available. (8) Watch the Hebrew IAA Ben Gurion notifications index for the Sukkot operating notice — the English index has carried nothing newer than 24 June. (9) Remove SAS Copenhagen from winter planning; re-plan October North American programmes on Israir at 3× weekly, not daily; hold a 7-day reconfirmation window on Air Canada from 30 November, Sundor Marrakesh from 16 November, El Al SFO from 25 October, the Wizz Air routes and any American booking. (10) Keep a 72-hour reconfirmation window on Israir New York and Delta JFK until an official source confirms operation. (11) Brief ETA-IL at least 72 hours ahead, a full week for Sukkot arrivals, and send clients only to israel-entry.piba.gov.il. (12) Verify the departure terminal per booking; meet-and-greet stays at T3, and transfer suppliers should use the free first-hour waiting lot, never the access roads.

⚠ Not confirmed from a Tier-A source this cycle: Ben Gurion, Ramon and land-crossing operating times for Sukkot, Shemini Atzeret and Simchat Torah (no IAA notice published as of 22 September); operation of Israir TLV–JFK and its revised ramp (launch 16 Sep, 3× weekly, 4× from 19 Oct, 6× from 1 Dec, A330-200); operation of Delta JFK–TLV; Air Canada Toronto–Tel Aviv from 30 November 2026, 4× weekly, Boeing 787; Sundor Tel Aviv–Marrakesh from 16 November 2026, 2× weekly, which is also subject to regulatory approval; the cancellation of SAS Copenhagen–Tel Aviv; El Al SFO from 25 October; Delta ATL from 19 December; United SFO from 28 March 2027; American JFK–TLV March 2027; the current operating status of United ORD and IAD; the Wizz Air routes and frequencies; operation of the Israir Eilat PSO rotations; the August 2026 actual total (IAA report unpublished; ~2.6m IAA forecast, ~2.65m in the press) and any September 2026 actuals including today’s; exact Israel Railways first-train times after the Yom Kippur stop and the Ben Gurion airport-station times, and the Erev Sukkot last-train times; the Israel Railways Sukkot schedule changes, which reach us only through a Tier-B relay; any further Modi’in / Route 431 closures; the ETA-IL fee (NIS 25), validity (up to 2 years / 90 days) and processing time (up to 72 hours), and the 8 December 2025 update date of the gov.il entry-requirement page, none of which could be re-read this cycle; the Allenby Israeli-citizen restriction and the reduced-mobility assistance line (carried); the T3 “Area G”; easyJet and Gulf-carrier frequencies; the Israel Hotel Association ~380 members and all hotel-opening figures; the Tier-B report that Allenby reopened on the evening of 21 September, which conflicts with the IAA notice. Information for professional decision-making; not travel, security, legal or financial advice. Confirm time-sensitive matters with the relevant official authority before acting.

Stay informed

Travel Operations is refreshed twice weekly. Subscribe to receive updates from the Israel Tourism Intelligence Hub as they are published.

Subscribe to updates →