Heavy restrictions on flights in and out of Israel during the war voided the plans of tens of thousands of people who had purchased tickets to fly to or from Israel for Passover, spring break or any other reason.
Under Israel’s Aviation Services Law, customers whose flights are canceled are entitled to choose between a monetary refund of the full ticket price, or to be rebooked on a flight to their final destination under similar terms, at the earliest possible date and subject to seat availability.
But as they scrambled to find alternative ways in or out of Israel, many of those holding tickets for canceled flights on Israeli airlines said they were offered only a refund, with no opportunity to rebook, alleging that the seats airlines should have been required to reserve for them were instead sold off for significantly higher sums.
At the same time, customers who were offered the opportunity to rebook said the airlines’ unresponsive or non-existent customer service made it nearly impossible to do so, even as the carriers managed to continue efficiently selling tickets at prices massively inflated by the extremely limited supply.
“What to me seems really wrong is that they clearly were selling a few available seats for more money underneath the feet of people whose flights were cancelled,” said Devora Goldstein, who, like other Arkia customers, received an apologetic notification stating that the airline was doing its best to assist, and a notice that she would be getting a refund within 14 business days.
Another airline, Israir, told passengers whose flights were canceled that they could get a full refund, or choose to receive a future credit voucher worth 130% of their ticket price — not necessarily enough to cover the cost of a new ticket.
“Airlines are not entitled to decide unilaterally that they are going to refund passengers for canceled flights,” said David Sprecher, head of the Aviation and Defense Tech Practice at law firm Lipa & Co. “The passenger is entitled to decide what he or she wants, which is either a rebooking to the final destination or a refund.”
Goldstein, who spends her time between Israel and the US and needed to travel for work, had purchased an already pricey $1,700 one-way Arkia ticket to New York online about three weeks into the war with Iran.
The price was more than double what Arkia normally charges for the route — and the seat may have only been available because Arkia had refunded the original ticket-holder the lower original fare, rather than rebooking them on the reinstated flight, ostensibly pocketing the difference. Yet even paying that inflated price didn’t protect Goldstein from being stranded herself.
“I received a notice of the cancelled flight the night before it was scheduled to leave because of new restrictions and there was no offer to rebook,” Goldstein recounted. “The next morning as I was feeling nervous about needing to leave, I went back to Arkia’s website, and suddenly I see that very few seats were being sold for the same flight with the same number and the same departure time, but for a much higher price than I paid.”
Others told of paying up to $1,800 for tickets to New York that normally go for $749.
“They are profiting from the situation as they are reselling tickets to people who are willing to pay more,” Goldstein said.
The allegation is not a new one. In previous periods of air traffic restrictions at Ben Gurion Airport, including during the 12-day Iran war in 2025, Arkia and other Israeli airlines, including Air Haifa, were accused of allegedly misleading customers into accepting refunds for flight cancellations and then selling new tickets at exorbitant prices.
“What has been happening, that they say they are sorry that they have no other flights available, and just give money back, has been going on for years,” said Adam Levin, founding partner at Rapoport Levin – Law Offices. “A lot of times, they will decide, based on their own calculation, whether to provide a more expensive flight or sell it to someone else.”
“Clearly, when they have seats that they are selling, they are not upholding their end of the bargain, and they are not enforcing the law as it’s supposed to be enforced,” said Levin.
Levin represents plaintiffs in an ongoing class action suit against Arkia, who experienced flight disruptions during the Hamas war and in June 2025 because of the fighting with Iran.
“We are going to argue that the same thing is happening again over the past month,” said Levin. “Arkia does not have a policy, and they do whatever they want at any given point in time, and generally speaking, they don’t give customers the option of an alternative flight.”
He noted that some of those buying tickets at the higher prices were the same customers whose previous flights were canceled, though airlines should pay the difference when customers have to shell out more for the same product.
Arkia said in response that it “has been operating around the clock in order to return its customers, along with thousands of other Israelis, to Israel, and was among the first airlines to create alternative and creative solutions in a complex reality. Arkia customers whose flights were canceled received a full refund, and in cases where alternative or rescue flights were operated from the relevant destinations, they were given priority in allocation and were assigned first, without any additional charge for the rescue flights.”
Israir was unable to provide a response by publication time.
Unanswered calls
Unlike Arkia and Israir, flag carrier El Al has been offering customers whose flights have been canceled either a full refund or a credit voucher for future travel, while promising to allocate seats on available flights to passengers holding an existing El Al ticket before offering it to others.
David Levendovics, 20, was stranded in Budapest when his flight back to Tel Aviv was canceled. He said he desperately tried to reach El Al’s WhatsApp chatbot customer service support system for days to be rebooked on a flight that would allow him to fly back to Israel ahead of his enlistment in the Israel Defense Forces on May 5.
“When my original flight became available again, I repeatedly contacted customer service and received an automatic message that they are working on reassignments, prioritizing El Al ticketholders before starting to sell new tickets, and will reach out to me soon, and there is no need to contact customer service again,” said Levendovics. “Well, it somehow didn’t happen because all the tickets I saw available online at a much higher price were sold before they finally reassigned me on a later date, after a several-day process.”
Levendovics, who moved to Israel in August, said that he had booked travel on El Al despite the significantly higher price, as he trusted that the Israeli carrier would provide reliable support in emergency situations — especially as someone about to serve in the IDF as a lone soldier.
“Instead, I found myself without meaningful assistance, unable to reach a human representative at customer service for days, and ultimately losing the ability to travel on my originally booked flight,” he said.
An El Al spokesperson responded that the sheer volume of customer service requests — as many as tens of thousands per day — led them to use WhatsApp to more efficiently handle the deluge.
“In order to provide the broadest possible real-time response, the company focused on the WhatsApp channel, which enables representatives to handle multiple inquiries simultaneously and significantly expand service availability,” the company said in a statement.
“Throughout the entire period, assisting customers whose flights were canceled remained the highest priority, and no new ticket sales from Israel were opened until the handling of these customers had been completed,” it added. “We are aware that some customers experienced long waiting times and uncertainty, and we apologize for that.”
When war erupted on February 28, Israel initially closed its airspace to civilian traffic completely, forcing all airlines with routes serving the country to cancel. After a week, it eased restrictions, though operations were still at only a fifth of pre-war levels, and only Israeli airlines were authorized to operate.
At Ben Gurion Airport, takeoffs and landings were limited to one plane per hour, and outbound flights were capped at 100 people on board. The restrictions meant that only a small fraction of ticketed customers could actually get on planes. Despite continuing to sell tickets, Israeli airlines, including Arkia and Israir, were also promising customers to find alternative solutions, including attempting to operate flights out of airports in Taba, Egypt, and Aqaba, Jordan, both of which are near land crossings into Israel.
Sprecher, who was a legal adviser formulating the Israeli Aviation Law back in 2012, said passengers had a right to insist on being “rerouted to any destination, and from there, [being put on] local flights to their final destination.”
Goldstein said when she was unable to reach a human at Arkia, she decided to go to the airport on the day she was supposed to take off, to try to get a spot on the flight. There she found others in the same boat or worse, she recalled.
“At the check-in counter, I was told that I didn’t have a seat as it was canceled, and that they can’t answer questions or help me as they don’t actually work for Arkia,” said Goldstein. “There were at least 20 of us there in a similar situation: some people said they were never notified of a flight cancellation, and others had just received information about it a few hours ago.”
Arkia said in response that its “service centers operated around the clock throughout the entire period and handled tens of thousands of inquiries.”
“The service teams did everything in their power to provide a prompt and comprehensive response,” it added.
Trying to get onto the same flight as Goldstein was a young couple and their 2-year-old from Beit Shemesh, who were trying to make their way to New York.
“After our original flights with Iberia and El Al were cancelled because of the war and we were eager to be with our family in New Jersey for the Passover holiday, we managed to buy seats for the three of us for $1,800 each one-way to New York with Arkia booked through a reputable travel agency,” said the mom, a 26-year-old immigrant from the US who preferred to remain anonymous.
Ahead of the departure, they tried numerous times via the airline’s WhatsApp customer service channel to get information about whether their flight was leaving as scheduled but without any success and without an option to speak to a human representative.
“We decided to arrive at the airport around 8 hours before departure time, to be extra safe and to be the first in line, only to be told that our reservation booked through a travel agency was cancelled and that there is no one to talk to,” said the mom. “It was just a brutal, awful, and unpleasant experience.”
She recalled that at the airport, a family with five kids mentioned to them that they had booked their ticket on the same flight the night before.
“They were let on the flight,” she said, “while others like us were refused.”
Source:
www.timesofisrael.com
