Shalom El Al!

The jumbo jets are more than just a plane for the leading national airline El Al. When the airline took ownership of its first jet back in May 1971, it symbolised new beginnings. Victory in the 1967 Six-Day War had made the young nation more self-confident and brought it closer to the US. This led to more Israelis wanting to travel abroad and more Jews from the US wanting to visit the promised land.

The first Boeing 747-400s were the airline’s largest passenger aircraft in the 1990s, featuring more than 400 seats. In our 4X-ELA, too, the last configuration had a total of 403 seats divided into first and business class as well as premium economy and economy.

But El Al has transported almost three times as many passengers in a single flight before: From 23 to 25 May 1991, Israel implemented Operation Solomon, flying more than 14,000 Ethiopian Jews out from the Horn of Africa to Israel on 35 military and civilian aircraft. Some of these were El Al planes. One of them took off with 1086 passengers on board and two babies were even born during the flight – a record the airline still holds today.

In November 2019, our 4X-ELA was the penultimate Boeing 747 from El Al’s scheduled passenger service to be retired and had been awaiting recycling in Tel Aviv ever since. On December 6th 2020, it was scrapped.

“Tel Aviv-Jaffa” is our first official cooperation with El Al and we are thrilled to welcome the carrier to our Aviationtags family as exclusive license partner!

Thanks to Ido Wachtel for the photos of the teardown.