On July 16, at the Ramon Eilat Airport, a maiden flight landed and marked the start of a new chapter for the city near the Red Sea. Low-cost Arkia Airline was the first one landing at the new airport, which is scheduled to open in March 2019.
Located 18 kilometers north of Eilat in the Valley of Timma, it will replace two regional airports. The first one being J. Hozman, currently used for propeller-driven aircrafts due to its short runway, and the second, Ovda, which accommodates commercial planes from Europe and Russia but is more than one hour drive from Eilat.
The Ilan and Assaf Ramon Airport, was named in the memory of the first Israeli astronaut Ilan Ramon, who perished in the Columbia Space Shuttle catastrophe in 2003.
His son Assaf Ramon, died at the age of 21, six years after the death of his father, when his F-16 fighter jet crashed during a training exercise.
The airport terminal should welcome around 2 million passengers a year, with an extension capacity of 4, 2 million by 2030.
The building project was taken over by Israeli architects, Mann Shinar and Moshe Zur. In order to fit into the surrounding environment, the airport’s terminal building is self-shading and reassembles a large desert boulder. The glass-cladded terminal provides unique views onto the mountainous desert scenery.
The airport will ease the journey of many European passengers, among others, travelling to the Israeli seaside resort. Many tourists enjoy the area’s landscape, travelling between Eilat, the Dead Sea and Massada.
Lately, there has been an increase in the number of low-cost flights going to Eilat from Europe, including Ryanair which already offers cheap flights to a number of European destinations. Travelers will be able to reach Eilat from many Europeans cities like Bucharest, Budapest, London, Riga, Waewaw, Vienna, Frankfort and many others, with around 60 commercial aircrafts a day going from Europe and Russia.
Tourism in Israel has been increasing constantly for the last ten years. In 2018, nearly one million tourists visited the country from January to March, according to Data from the Central Bureau of Statistics. The Ramon airport will create another comfortable root for tourists to Israel and will hopefully increase even more the flow of tourist to Israel’s sunny beaches.