Delta Air Lines is going back to Israel. On 26 August 2026 the carrier confirmed that daily nonstop flights between New York John F. Kennedy International Airport and Tel Aviv's Ben Gurion International Airport will restart on 6 September 2026, ending a suspension that has been in place since late February.
The service will be operated by the Airbus A330-900neo, giving passengers access to Delta One, Delta Premium Select, Delta Comfort and Main Cabin. The first departure from New York arrives in Israel on 7 September and returns to JFK later the same day.
Delta stopped flying to Tel Aviv on 28 February 2026, when the United States and Israel launched strikes against Iran. In March the airline extended the pause until September 2026 at the earliest, citing the ongoing risk of missile and drone attacks on Israel. The decision to return follows what the carrier described as a "thorough review of the evolving security environment in the region."
"The safety and security of our customers and employees remain our top priority, and Delta will continue to monitor the situation closely in coordination with aviation authorities and government agencies," a Delta spokesperson said.
The timing matters commercially as much as operationally. United Airlines announced last month that it would resume its own Tel Aviv service from Newark Liberty on 8 September 2026, and has since said it will restart San Francisco-Tel Aviv from 28 March 2027. Delta's 6 September restart therefore puts it back into the market two days ahead of its closest US rival - a small margin, but a meaningful one on a route where corporate, diaspora and religious travel demand has been bottled up for six months.
Not every Delta route to Israel is coming back at once. The airline has not yet announced a resumption date for Atlanta-Tel Aviv, and the planned launch of a new Boston-Tel Aviv service had already been pushed back to late October at the earliest. American Airlines, which has not served Israel since October 2023, has yet to announce a return.
The choice of the A330-900neo is worth noting. Delta's newest widebody Airbus is a twin-aisle, twin-engine aircraft built for exactly this kind of medium-to-long-haul transatlantic-plus mission: enough range to reach the eastern Mediterranean comfortably from the US East Coast, but with a seat count that is easier to fill than a larger widebody on a route whose demand profile is still recovering. Delta has been steadily concentrating its premium-heavy international flying on the type, and the full four-cabin layout means the carrier can chase the front-of-cabin revenue that makes long, thin routes work.
For Ben Gurion, the return of a second US major is another step in rebuilding the long-haul network that emptied out through the first half of 2026. Israeli carriers carried much of the transatlantic load during the suspension, and Israir recently cleared its final US regulatory hurdle for planned Tel Aviv-New York flights of its own. A more competitive JFK-TLV market is the likely outcome of the next few months.
As always with schedules in this region, the restart is conditional. Delta has been explicit that it will keep monitoring the security picture, and the last eighteen months have shown how quickly published plans can change. For now, though, 6 September is on the books.
Sources: Simple Flying, AeroTime. Featured image: AI-generated by AviationShop. By Elena Vargas.
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