Following the decision to temporarily cancel flights to Italy and Thailand and to postpone the opening of the line to Japan, the company's management made a far-reaching decision

El Al's CEO, Gonen Ussishkin, on Thursday, appealed to senior executives to present a plan to deal with the difficult situation El Al was facing as a result of the spread of the corona virus.

First Corona patient in Israel, a man who returned from Italy // Photo: Paz Barr

In an appeal to senior officials, Ussishkin asked him to present a plan for laying off a thousand out of about six thousand employees at the largest Israeli airline.
This is a dramatic, painful and difficult step that is being forced into the company a few hours after announcing that as a result of the Corona crisis, the company's revenues have dropped by about seventy million dollars, a huge financial damage to El Al.

In the afternoon, El Al announced that the company's flights to all destinations in Italy and Bangkok in Thailand would be canceled. In addition, the company announced that the launch of the direct line to Tokyo will be postponed to April 4 this year.

The company has to deal with a large wave of cancellations to the same destinations, following the outbreak of the Corona virus and the Foreign Ministry and Health Ministry warnings about those countries. The decision on Thailand, Italy and Japan joins the extension of flights to Beijing and Hong Kong until May 2 this year.