Review of Israir flight from Tel Aviv to Tbilisi in Economy

A (small) sacrifice for peace and quiet

Hello and welcome to another Flight Report!! 

This is FR number 2 from my trip around Asia and today we'll be flying from Tel Aviv, Israel to Tbilisi, Georgia. Georgia is a fairly popular destination for Israelis as there are several flights from Tel Aviv to Tbilisi and Batumi (another city on the coast). I originally wanted to fly this route on Arkia, another Israeli LCC. However, it soon became obvious that it was (quite literally) impossible for foreigners to fly with them. This is because their website doesn't have an English version, which is already hard enough for most people. Even if you used Google Translate to get to the booking page (yes, I was that determined), it'll then ask for an Israeli ID number, a mandatory field that cannot be skipped. Apparently, you can get through it by entering all 0s, but I'm certainly not gonna find out if that works or not on the day. 

So, having wasted a good couple of hours, I admitted defeat and turned to its competitor Israir. Israir, like Arkia, also doesn't have a proper English version of their website, meaning that I had to (once again) turn to Google Translate and hope it's good enough. It was an… interesting… process as the translation isn't perfect so I had to somewhat guess what I had to fill out for each field. Which, in hindsight, isn't much better than Arkia. 

Luckily, I did go well and there were no issues during check-in. ;)  As for price, I paid $145 for a single, which is average for such a route. 

I aim to offset all of my CO2 emissions from flights. All emissions are calculated using the ICAO Carbon Emissions Calculator and I will be funding projects approved by The Gold Standard.

Tel Aviv Ben Gurion International Airport (TLV)

The airport is well served by trains going from Tel Aviv and from around the country, such as Jerusalem and Haifa. The station is directly under Terminal 3, the main terminal for international flights. 

Here's the arrivals area on the ground floor. 

There are some shops here in case you get hungry after your flight. 

And here you see a lot of very excited people, except most of those people aren't welcome back family or friends. No, this FR was taken on the 12th of August, a day after the end of the Summer Olympics in Paris. Most of these people are here to catch a glimpse of the Israeli athletes returning after winning 1 gold, 5 silver, and a bronze medal for the country. 

And here's a nice view of the mayhem. You have a few TV crews and a load of people drumming and dancing in front of the exit.

This is definitely the craziest arrivals lobby I've ever seen haha. 

Anyway, while most international flights depart out of Terminal 3, Terminal 1 is used for domestic flights and LCCs, including Israir. And here's the check-in area. It's a lot smaller and a lot older. As of the writing of this FR (November 2024), T1 is closed following the exit of Ryanair, easyJet, and Wizz Air from Israel. 

Check-in/security when departing Israel is much, much easier than coming in. There was a short interview before check-in, which just consisted of a quick check of if you packed the bags yourself and a quick look at the passport. Check-in took absolutely ages (around 45 minutes) and security took around 10 minutes with a full swab test. Here's the airside area with duty-free stores on the right.

There's also a food court with a lot of options, which is great for a smaller terminal like this one. 

View of the apron. The terminal has no jetbridges and all boarding has to be done by bus. 

the flight

Flight time to Tbilisi will be around 2 hours 20 minutes and here's our route: 

This is a great demonstration of the issue of flight tracking around Israel. According to FR24, we flew directly over Beirut before 'teleporting' over Northern Cyprus. This is completely wrong and is due to GPS jamming teleporting all affected targets to the center of Beirut Airport (and explains why a lot of flights to TLV are shown to have 'diverted to BEY' on its status). 

And here's a nice photo of our plane: 

Look at how close those people are allowed to the engines!! 

Some info about our plane: 

Type: Airbus A320
Registration: 4X-ABF
First flight: 21 June 2010
Age: ~14 years
Config: Y174

A standard A320 was delivered to Israir in 2010. She was painted in the "Israel & United Arab Emirates "Future, Peace, Partnership" special livery from 2020 to 2022, which is the only notable thing about this plane haha.

View of the seatback pocket and tray table with all the magazines & menus sticking out of the back. It looks ridiculous, especially when viewing it from the front. 

Legroom is… meh… for an LCC. 

First views out of the wing. 

Nice view of the El Al maintenance hanger with a 777 getting worked on. 

It was at this point during boarding that I was asked if I could move to an aisle seat nearby. This was because a family was desperate to sit together with the child screaming on the seat next to me. I said yes as it'd be a pretty painful flight for everyone if he weren't allowed to sit with his family. Unfortunately, that would mean no window shots however, it didn't matter as most of the flight would be flown in the dark
 
View of the cabin during climb. The flight is around 98% full. 

With nothing to do, let's have a look at the contents of the seatback pocket, which includes a safety card, a menu, and an inflight magazine. 

The menu has both hot and cold options and prices are alright. 

Unfortunately, with no window view, there's nothing to take photos of. I briefly saw some lights during descent but apart from that, it was rather uninteresting and we arrived 5 minutes early. 

Tbilisi International Airport (TBS)

Walking to immigration…

… which took under 5 minutes. 

The baggage reclaim area. There's not a lot of people with it being 11 PM. 

Welcome to Georgia! Home of gorgeous mountains, a unique language, and super welcoming people! 

I'll end this FR here. I'm spending 3 days here in Tbilisi before heading to the lack sea city of Batumi. I've attached a tourism bonus of my time here. Thanks for reading and I'll see you in my next FR where I'll continue my journey around the Caucasus.