The aircraft was painted with the logo of the "El Al/Israel National Aviation Company" and fitted with extra fuel tanks to enable a non-stop flight from Geneva to Israel.

[18] On 15 June 1961, the airline set a world record for the longest non-stop commercial flight: an El Al Boeing 707 flew from New York to Tel Aviv, covering 5,760 miles (9,270 km) in 9 hours and 33 minutes.

On 23 July, the only successful hijacking of an El Al aircraft took place, when a Boeing 707 carrying 10 crew and 38 passengers were taken over by three members of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP).

[29] On 26 December of the same year, two PFLP members attacked an El Al aircraft at Athens International Airport, killing an Israeli mechanic.

[citation needed] On 18 February 1969, Palestinians attacked an El Al plane at Zurich Airport, killing the copilot and injuring the pilot.

Between September and December of that year, bomb and grenade attacks occurred at El Al offices in Athens, West Berlin, and Brussels.

However, the religious parties in the government were outraged by this change believing that it was a violation of Jewish law and contrary to the agreement signed in the early days of the state, in which El Al promised to refrain from flying on the Sabbath.

[18] It broke another record since then surpassed, in May 1988 with a non-stop flight from Los Angeles to Tel Aviv, a journey of 7,000 nautical miles (13,000 km) in 13 hours and 41 minutes.

On 24 May 1991, an El Al Boeing 747 cargo plane airlifted a record-breaking 1,088 Ethiopian Jews from Addis Ababa to Israel in the framework of Operation Solomon.

[24] In 1996, El Al recorded US$83.1 million in losses, due to the resumption of terrorist activities and the government's open skies policy.

[39] In August 2010, El Al and JetBlue signed an agreement to provide connecting through tickets between Israel and 61 destinations in the United States from October 2010, via John F. Kennedy International Airport in New York.

[41] The airline's workers' union stated that the requirement would endanger the health and safety of the flight attendants and instructed its members to ignore the rule.

El Al also converted some of their Boeing 787 Dreamliner airplanes to serve as cargo flights to transport medical goods from China to Europe through Tel Aviv's Ben Gurion Airport.

[45] On 6 July, the company announced it had worked out a bailout deal with the government to make up the hundreds of millions of dollars it had lost due to the COVID-19 pandemic in Israel and abroad.

On 17 April 2022, El-Al started its first direct flight between the Israeli coastal city of Tel Aviv and Egypt's Red Sea resort of Sharm el-Sheikh.

As the national cargo airline of Israel, it operates between Tel Aviv, Liège, and New York, plus ad hoc worldwide charters with one Boeing 747-200F aircraft.

The charter operations of the group is carried out through Sun d'Or, a company fully owned by El Al. Sun d'Or operates as a tourist organizer for wholesalers and individuals and markets charter and scheduled flights, both by means of leasing full aircraft capacity to third parties, or aircraft parts' capacity to a number of partners for pre-negotiated prices, or by direct sales.

In March 2011, The Israel Civil Aviation Authority (CAA) announced the suspension of Sun d'Or's operating license effective 1 April 2011.

The CAA based its decision citing non-compliance with Israeli and international airline management standards, mainly lack of self-owned planes and crew.

[74] Since then, Sun d'Or no longer operates own aircraft but utilizes planes from its parent, El Al. Superstar (a company fully owned by El Al) is a tourist wholesaler that markets tourist package deals to travel agents and passengers, and sells airline tickets at discounted prices for flights on the company's routes.

[79][80] Israel's airport security measures were instituted in 1968 after the El Al Flight 426 hijacking by the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine.

[82][83][84][85] In 2014, El Al began to fit some of its planes that fly on more sensitive routes with an updated missile approach warning system (MAWS) that employs an infrared missile-tracking camera, an "infrared (IR), ultra-violet (UV), or radar missile-approach warning sensor to detect a missile launch in the very early stages of an attack" and a laser system to act as a counter-measure.

At passport control, passengers' names are checked against information from the FBI, Canadian Security Intelligence Service (CSIS), Scotland Yard, Shin Bet, and Interpol databases.

[90] Undercover agents (sometimes referred to as sky marshals) carrying concealed firearms sit among the passengers on every international El Al flight.

As a result, a petition was initiated with Change.org to pressure El Al to alter their policy of allowing ultra-Orthodox passengers on flights to negotiate switching seats.

"[98][99][100][101] Following the incidents, Iris Richman, founder of Jewish Voices Together, a group created to address issues of religious pluralism in Israel and the U.S., encouraged passengers to protest this behavior through the US government, referencing "49 U.S. Code § 40127 – Prohibitions on discrimination: Persons in Air Transportation".

If we [women] want the right to pray and practice and dress in the ways we see fit, why do we cast such caustic aspersions on the premise of a man who calmly asks to change his seat in order for him not to stray from his preferred religious outlook?"

From its founding until 2020, El Al's inability to overfly Saudi Arabian airspace, along with that of several other Arab and Muslim countries, has reduced their ability to further expand their route network in Asia.

Points accumulated in the program entitle members to bonus tickets, flight upgrades, and discounts on car rentals, hotel stays, and other products and services.

The King David Lounge at Terminal 3 at Tel Aviv-Ben Gurion airport is equipped with a telephone, shower facilities and a spa; it has a separate section for first-class passengers.