So you’d like to book a flight to Israel, and a bit cheap if that’s possible? Who doesn’t! To help you out with this issue, we’ve got some tips for you.

1. The bad news: flights to Israel are quite expensive. There aren’t many low cost carriers serving the country so if you’re looking to book a cheap flight to Israel a great option would be to use a charter airline. One such airline is Arkia. They offer charter flights from many European and nearby locations to Israel and vice-versa. The downside of this is that such flights come packed with a hotel and maybe some sort of tour of Israel. Some of these services are at a discount but truth be told in total you might end up paying more than you would choosing hotels and tours and flights by yourself so it’s best to search and compare.

2. Timing is of utmost importance if you’d like a cheap flight to Israel. Or anywhere else actually. Plan your trip early and search for cheap flights early. And book early, several months in advance because airlines usually split tickets in batches. The first batch on sale is the cheap tickets batch and the last is the expensive tickets batch. Booking flights to Israel early might mean booking cheap flights to Israel.

3. Or you could try to ignore timing completely and book a last minute flight. This will only help you get a cheap deal in case the flight isn’t booked completely and the airline will try to cover fixed costs by selling an extra ticket to you cheaper. Truth be told, your negotiating skills should be top notch and even so it’s much more likely to get an expensive flight than a cheap flight. I don’t recommend this but it’s your life.

4. If you’re coming from North America, you should try picking up a connecting flight in Europe. It is most likely to find a good deal containing two flights: one from North America to Europe and another form Europe to Israel. Many people have recommended using Czech Airlines from Israel to North America through Prague and vice-versa.

5. Although flights to Israel are quite expensive almost all the time, there are small time frames where one could find cheaper offers. One such time frame is in the off season at the start of the year in January and early February.

6. Try out Israir Airlines. They are the second largest carrier in Israel after El Al and rumor has it that the company has been modeled after the famous low cost American company JetBlue. They have a comprehensive site and it wouldn’t hurt you to search for some deals there. They operate International charter flights as well as domestic flights and air taxi flights.

Site: israirairlines.com

7. You should also look for Lufthansa flights to Israel. While not exactly a cheap carrier, Lufthansa usually has a decent offer of flights to Israel and if you book early and look around for deals you might get lucky and catch a cheap flight.

“What if, after using all your methods, I still haven’t found a cheap flight to Israel? What now?”

Well, you should still try the classic method:

1. Search for cheap flights to Israel on aggregators such as Kayak, Yahoo! FareChase or Bing Travel. Note down the best deals you can find.

2. Then search for cheap Israel flights on traditional booking engines such as Orbitz, Expedia, Priceline, Travelocity, Hotwire, CheapTickets from the US and Canada. From Europe try out SkyScanner, Vayama or MoMondo. Write down the best deals.

3. And at last, search for flights to Israel on airlines’ websites. We’ve already recommended a couple of airlines above but there are many more of them such as El Al, Egypt Air, Royal Jordanian as wel as any you’ve found using aggregators and booking engines. Note down the results.

You might wonder why should you take this step if you’ve gone through steps 1 and 2? Because there are airlines that don’t show up in aggregators or booking engines because they don’t want to.

4. You should’ve ended up with a list containing the best flights to Israel you’ve found. Go through them and pick the option that fits your needs best.

This concludes our article on cheap flights to Israel. We reckon this is a tough subject and we need all the help we can get to bring visitors something of value related to cheap Israel flights so if you’ve got anything valuable to say on this don’t hesitate to post a comment.

How does one get to Israel? Well, as with any other country, you can reach Israel through various methods but some are more complicated than others.

1. Getting To Israel By Plane

Getting to Israel by plane is the easiest and fastest method you can use. The downside of this is that there are few cheap flights to Israel. For how to increase your chances of getting a cheap flight to Israel you should check out our special “Cheap Flights To Israel” page from the sidebar. Most flights will land at the Ben Gurion International Airport which is very close to both Tel Aviv and Jerusalem but closer to Jerusalem. From there you can rent a car or take public transportation to your destination.

2. Getting To Israel By Ferry

Unfortunately passenger ferries from and to Israel have mostly stopped running from 2001 onwards and there doesn’t seem to be any glimmer of light that service will resume soon. There were ferries from and to Cyprus, Piraeus in Greece and even London. One company that used to run ferries on Israel routes was Salamis International. There are still cargo ferries though and rumor has it that some of these ferries are taking few human passengers and only by request. If you’d like such a thrill then don’t hesitate to contact such companies. You can find them easily by inquiring about them in the port you’re interested in departing from.

There may still be some ferries running now but they are very erratic in schedule. Two companies specialized in cargo and human ferries are Rosenfeld and Grimaldi. Their sites are listed below. They usually use Ashdod and/or Haifa as ports in Israel. You should inquire them both thoroughly before booking a trip. Use at your own risk.

Grimaldi Ferries Site: grimaldi-freightercruises.com
Rosenfeld Ferries Site: rosenfeld.net

3. Getting To Israel By Train

If you’d like to get to Israel by train then you can do so from Europe. How? Well, let’s take the remote (relative to Israel and strictly geographically) European city of London. If you’d like to take the train from there to Israel you’ll go through the following route: London – Paris – Vienna – Budapest – Istanbul – -Adana (Turkey) – Aleppo (Syria) – Damascus (Syria) – Amman (Jordan) – Jerusalem (between Adana, Turkey and Aleppo, Syria, you’ll have to take the bus or another transportation method). The trick here is that you’ve gone from Syria to Jordan to enter Israel. The other way around doesn’t work because Syria won’t let you on their territory if you’ve got anything containing Israel stamped on your passport. Nonetheless, it’ll be quite an interesting journey on the way there.

One other option is to go from Europe to Athens by train and than catch a ferry – if any – to Israel.

4. Getting To Israel By Car

Not much to say on this other than that it is doable and can be done both from Jordan and from Egypt.

If you come from Europe through Syria you can’t go back on the same route though. If that’s the case then one option is to catch a RoRo ferry to Europe, either via Cyprus and Turkey or via Greece. It’s doable but expensive, unreliable and slow. Plus you run the risk of damaging your car. Of course, one can also use a RoRo ferry the other way around, namely to enter Israel but the same risks apply. You can find some companies that are doing this in the ferry section above.

Do note that you can’t take a rental car into and out of Israel.

Simply put, getting to Israel by car is too much hassle.

5. Getting To Israel By Bus

You can get into Israel by bus from both Jordan and Egypt. If you come from Europe by land then you should pass through Syria and reach Jordan. You should take the bus – in case you weren’t in one already – from Amman – the Jordanian capital – to any Israeli city you choose.

From Egypt, you’ll have to take an internal bus to Taba, an Egyptian city close to the Israeli border, cross the border on foot, reach Eilat in Israel which is about 30 minutes away from the border and catch an internal Israel bus from downtown Eilat to other Israeli destinations. Do notice that in Israel on Shabbat – Friday and Saturday evening – buses don’t run at all so plan your bus trip from Egypt carefully.

What should you do to get into Israel easily? Not much. Just be yourself. Don’t lie at the border, tell the truth and you’ll be fine in case you’re not involved in any shady activities. You’ll come into heavier scrutiny in case you’ve got visas on your passports from countries Israel doesn’t have a very good relationship with such as Lebanon, Syria, Iran, Pakistan, etc. but as long as you tell the truth no matter how silly it may sound you should be OK even though it’ll take a bit longer.

This concludes our article on getting to Israel. If you have any tips on how to get to Israel then don’t hesitate to share them by posting a comment below.