El Al Israel Airlines reported net profit of $125.9 million for the second quarter of 2026, roughly double what the carrier earned in the same three months a year earlier, as flight demand surged once the airline restored its full schedule following the fighting with Iran.

Revenue for the quarter came in at $986 million, up 27% year over year. The results were released Wednesday morning in Tel Aviv and sent the airline’s shares up nearly 8% in early trading.

The profit figure is all the more striking because it absorbed a direct hit from the conflict. El Al says it lost roughly $55 million during the first nine days of the quarter as a result of Operation Roaring Lion, the Israeli campaign against Iran. Without that drag, quarterly net income would have landed near $190 million.

Most of the wartime damage, however, fell in the earlier period. El Al posted a $69 million loss in the first quarter of 2026 — its first quarterly loss in three years — as airspace closures and canceled routes stripped out revenue while fixed costs kept running.

Capacity Came Back, and So Did Fares

The turnaround traces to timing. El Al says it had its full operation back in the air by the start of May, and demand climbed sharply from that point forward. The carrier expanded available seating by 9% versus the year-earlier quarter, and still managed to raise what it collects on each of those seats.

Revenue per available seat kilometer, the industry’s core pricing gauge, rose 12% to $0.1156. Translated into plain terms: El Al flew more seats and charged more for them at the same time — the combination that produces outsized airline earnings when it holds.

Advance bookings suggest the pattern has legs. The airline’s booking backlog stood at $1.4 billion at the close of the quarter, compared with $1.2 billion at the same point in 2025.

Not everything moved in the carrier’s favor. Jet fuel costs rose during the quarter, driven by crude prices that have stayed elevated on fears of renewed hostilities between Washington and Tehran. A stronger shekel also worked against the airline, since much of its revenue is collected in dollars while a significant share of its costs sits in local currency.

Guidance Points Higher

With one month of the third quarter already behind it, El Al told investors it expects strong demand to carry through the summer. The company projects available seat kilometers will grow 6% to 10% against the third quarter of 2025, with revenue per seat kilometer rising another 4% to 7% as fares continue to firm.

Load factor — the share of seats actually filled — is expected to stay above 90%, a level that leaves the airline very little unsold inventory heading into its peak travel season.

The carrier also pointed to growth in its loyalty base. Frequent flyer membership rose by 270,000 over the past year to 3.7 million, and 514,000 customers now carry its co-branded credit card, an increase of 33,000.

The American Connection

For US travelers and investors, El Al is not a distant story. The airline runs the primary nonstop link between Israel and New York, Los Angeles, Miami, Boston and Newark, and pricing on those routes has been a persistent sore point for the American Jewish community and business travelers alike through nearly two years of disrupted service.

Wednesday’s results confirm what passengers have been feeling at the checkout screen: higher fares are doing a great deal of the work in El Al’s recovery. Seat supply grew by single digits while per-seat revenue grew by double digits.

Control of the company also runs through New York. Kenny Rozenberg, the healthcare operator who led the group that acquired the airline in 2020, and his son Eli Rozenberg hold a controlling stake now worth more than NIS 3.5 billion. That investment, made when El Al was near collapse during the pandemic shutdown, has appreciated dramatically — the shares are up roughly 400% over the past five years.

El Al carries a market capitalization of about NIS 8.4 billion. The stock had been down roughly 10% year to date before Wednesday’s report, reflecting investor caution over the war’s effect on Israeli aviation, before the earnings release reversed a chunk of that decline in a single session.

The larger question facing the airline is competitive rather than operational. Foreign carriers pulled out of Tel Aviv repeatedly during the fighting and have returned unevenly, leaving El Al with unusual pricing power on key long-haul routes. Whether the current margins survive the full return of international competition is the test that the next several quarters will settle.

JBizNews Desk | New York

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