Filenews 3 April 2025 - by Dora Christodoulou
The resumption of flights connecting Paphos International Airport with Israel after an interruption of about two months, is now a fact. As of this week, the Paphos-Tel Aviv and Haifa air connection has been largely restored, with Ryanair already operating the route daily and the official arrival of Israel's powerful carrier, EL-AL, is now expected from Monday.
Although the initial reports spoke of the resumption of tourist flows from mid-March, this was postponed for several days, which caused numbness and concern among the authorities and tourist operators of Paphos, as to whether Tel Aviv has indeed removed the doubts it expressed about safety issues and as to whether the tourist flow from Israel will indeed have Paphos as its main destination now or whether it will be the second airport of the Republic, complementary to Larnaca on these routes.
The resumption of airline routes from this week, however, causes satisfaction and hope that the flight schedule that has been announced will be adhered to without further contingencies. We remind you that in addition to Ryanair, which already operates continuous routes from Paphos to Tel Aviv, EL-AL announced four flights per week, Air Haifa six flights per week, Arkia five flights per week, TUS eight flights per week, while for the airline Israir there is still nothing official.
The Israeli market is currently the second largest market in Cyprus, which according to statistics is a year-round market and on average Israelis travel more than once a year, which is why tourist Paphos attaches great importance to the issue of normalizing the conditions around tourist flows from the neighbouring country.
