El Al plane at Tel Aviv's Ben Gurion Airport. Photo: Raimond Spekking.

Globes – The workers committees at Israel’s three carriers El Al Israel Airlines Ltd. (TASE: ELAL), Arkia Airlines Ltd., and Israir Airlines and Tourism Ltd. today decided at a crisis meeting to declare a strike beginning Sunday, unless the government freezes its intention to approve the open skies agreement at Sunday’s cabinet meeting, and open talks with the carriers’ representatives on the matter.

El Al workers committee chairman Asher Edry told “Globes” that the committees had taken the joint decision to ground all flights beginning Sunday, unless the government opens negotiations with them. “We demand that all the promises made to us before the agreement was signed, i.e. the issuing of slots at key European airports, code-sharing with foreign airlines, which have been blocked, and so forth, be implemented in full. Otherwise, we will shut down aviation.”

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