TRAVEL

EL AL Airlines making it easier to reach the Holy Land

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Part I of a series

Editor’s note: Editor Rick Snizek traveled to Israel on a Press Trip sponsored by EL AL Airlines and the Israel Ministry of Tourism designed to promote EL AL’s non-stop service from Boston to Tel Aviv.

TEL AVIV — Whether your family runs a New England-based international conglomerate doing business in 90 countries around the world, or an individual or family looking to make the most of an exciting vacation in a destination that many rank as a prime entry on their bucket list, the time spent traveling is precious.

When EL AL Israel Airlines announced last summer that it was planning to launch non-stop flights from Boston to Tel Aviv, it made one member of the New England Patriots family especially happy.

“This is huge. We make two to three dozen trips a year to our operations in Israel,” Dan Kraft, son of New England Patriots owner and Kraft Group Chairman and CEO Robert Kraft, told a gathering of journalists covering the kickoff of the non-stop flights.

Kraft said that the new service would save him and other company personnel traveling back and forth regularly about three to four hours each way because they would no longer have to fly first to New York to board a non-stop flight to Israel.

The Kraft family were strong proponents of convincing EL AL to launch non-stop flights from Boston as part of the airline’s broader initiative of opening up more non-stop routes from cities around the U.S. to Israel.

But you don’t have to be a leader in industry to enjoy the same time-saving benefits. Pilgrims or leisure travelers from Rhode Island and Massachusetts can now depart from Logan International Airport in Boston on any of three, 10-hour overnight non-stop flights each week to the Holy Land.

Flights aboard comfortable Boeing 767-300 aircraft currently depart on Sunday, Tuesday or Thursday evenings at about 9 p.m. and transit the Atlantic and Mediterranean, landing at the modern Ben Gurion International Airport southeast of Tel Aviv about 2 p.m. the next day. Non-stop return flights depart just after midnight, landing in Boston about 12 hours later, at about 5:30 a.m., with the seven-hour time difference between Eastern North America and Western Asia.

EL AL, known for its stringent security protocols that rank the airline a leader among the world’s safest to fly, offers three levels of service on these flights: Business Class, Economy Class Plus and Economy Class Service. Streaming technology allows passengers to fill the hours between award-winning meal services on board by viewing their choice of programs on their personal devices.

The initiative to encourage more U.S. tourists to visit Israel, as well as expand travel opportunities for Israeli citizens to New England, has paid off.

“It’s official, more Americans visited Israel in 2015 than in any year since Israel was reborn in 1948,” Uri Steinberg, Israel tourism commissioner for North America said on Jan. 12, when the latest tourism figures were released.

The statistics show that more than 620,000 Americans visited Israel in 2015, 3 percent more than in 2014, the previous record year.

“For much of the year, tourism specialists were seeing a monthly increase in arrivals, but only with the end-of-year statistics could we be really sure that we’d broken an all-time record,” Steinberg said.

Tourism from Canada and Mexico also broke records, with a 2 percent increase over 2014 from Canada and surge of 8 percent from Mexico, with a total of 802,000 North Americans visiting Israel in 2015.

When they arrive, both tourists and religious pilgrims find that for a small country approximately the size of the U.S. state of New Jersey, there is so much to see and do.

In addition to visiting the awe-inspiring Holy City of Jerusalem, with its four millennia of history to absorb and explore, travelers can enjoy ultra-modern Tel Aviv, a Miami-like collection of trendy shops and chic eateries arranged along the warm golden sand beaches fronting the sea blue Mediterranean. To the north, near the border with Lebanon, the well-preserved Crusader fortress Akko, a UNESCO World Heritage site, continues to command a strong presence and welcome many travelers each year from around the world to explore its chambers.

Inland, at the Sea of Galilee, some of the most recognized sites of biblical happenings are within easy driving distance of one another, along an excellent network of roads that is well-signed and outfitted for mass travel like any state or national park in the U.S.

And one of the most relaxing and peaceful journeys one can make there is actually off-road, when visitors climb aboard one of the wooden so-called “Jesus boats,” and sail quietly toward the center of the “Sea,” which is actually a freshwater lake about 13 miles long, stretching from Capernaum to Yardenit, which is believed to be the site of where John the Baptist initiated Jesus into the faith by baptizing him in the soothing waters of the Jordan River.

To the south are the Dead Sea, the lowest point on the surface of the Earth, and the famed fortress of Masada, perched high atop a mesa-like rock plateau. Even farther to the south is the Ramon Crater, Israel’s version of the Grand Canyon. Nearby, along Israel’s border with Egypt, one might do a double take as they approach the ironic development of vineyards and farms amid the arid sands of the Negev Desert, a place that David Ben-Gurion, Israel’s first prime minister, said that the reborn nation’s creativity and pioneer vigor would be tested.

With so much to see and do during a visit that promises to offer an experience like no other, travelers quickly learn that there is a whole other side of Israel than the one normally depicted on the evening news.