El Al plane (Kobi Richter/TPS)
While Israelis paid premium prices amid limited travel options, the CEO’s pay jumped 10% in 2024, including a NIS 3.6 million bonus atop her NIS 2.3 million salary and NIS 600,000 in stock compensation.
Israeli flag carrier El Al has certainly had a good year in a market virtually devoid of competition on North American routes.
Throughout 2024, El Al commanded a staggering 47.5% of all passenger traffic at Ben Gurion Airport, nearly doubling its pre-war market share.
As a result, the airline’s net profit exploded to $545 million, a jaw-dropping 4.7 times higher than 2023 figures. The company’s fourth quarter alone netted $130 million, and overall cash flow has ballooned to $1.4 billion.
Despite blatant market dominance, El Al vehemently rejects criticism of its wartime fare hikes, insisting average price increases were “only” 14% per passenger.
The company points to token gestures of fixed fares on select European routes: $199 to Larnaca, $299 to Athens, and $349 to Dubai, Vienna, and Frankfurt.
However, these modest concessions do little to address the exorbitant fares to North America, where Israelis and American Jews face severely limited options.
El Al’s own figures admit their revenue per available seat kilometer surged 24% in 2024, fueled by an extraordinary 94% seat occupancy.
Discussing the airline’s extraordinary seat occupancy with Globes, CEO Ben Tal Ganancia brushed off concerns with a joke that the unfilled seats were “apparently because we made a mistake somewhere in the count.”
Considering the NIS 6.3 million compensation package she just received, Ganancia could certainly afford flippant jokes about counting errors.
While Israelis paid premium prices amid limited travel options, the CEO’s pay jumped 10% in 2024, including a NIS 3.6 million bonus atop her NIS 2.3 million salary and NIS 600,000 in stock compensation. Chairman Ben-Zvi fared even better with a 29% increase in salary to NIS 5.4 million.
Though still unable to distribute dividends due to government bailout restrictions from the COVID era, El Al now sits on $654 million in distributable profits. Meanwhile, the company has ambitious targets of $4 billion revenue by 2030, betting that the global aircraft shortage will maintain their advantageous market position.
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