Sending Qantas aircraft and crew into a war zone! Why aren’t the RAAF doing the rescue?

An interesting question . France is doing the same the Government chartered Air France A350s ( one yesterday and 2 today ) to evacuate its citizens instead of using its Military A330s. ( which they did when evacuating civilians from Mali and Niger a few months ago ),
And I read Germany is also planning to charter Lufthansa to do the evacuation of its citizens instead of its own military aircraft .

"More than 300 people arrived in Budapest on Monday on Hungarian Air Force planes as part of a joint rescue operation by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade and the Ministry of Defense.

A few minutes after 1 p.m. on October 9, a Hungarian Defense Forces Airbus A319 landed at Budapest’s Liszt Ferenc International Airport with 110 people on board, evacuated from Tel Aviv, honvedelem.hu reports. This was the third rescue flight from Israel by the Hungarian Defense Forces."

Tel Aviv and back
 

Might be that an aircraft in civilian colours is not to be shot at.

Cyprus Airways must have seen my previous post and cancelled all flights in to and out of Tel Aviv, yesterday.

Most other European operators flying there at the same time. Their security teams with guidance from teams on the ground will assess the risk and also keep BALPA advised.
If the risk isn't tolerable they don't fly (unlike some other operators) The decision may have been down to if crews stopover in TLV, as you know a lot of UK carriers go there and back - BA don't because they in your words "maximise revenue at the expense of everything else" (maybe the don't)

Because the threat is not high enough? It's not as though Hamas has air supremacy over Tel Aviv and long-range SAMs everywhere. And I suppose if they don't get any volunteers they'll have to use the RAAF.

it was done with monotonous regularity during the Vietnam War, flying 707s into Saigon. But not too monotonous for those in the front seats!

Qantas mercy flights, or at least the one that departed Heathrow just over 3 hours ago for TLV, are flying under RAAF callsigns.

The Netherlands have sent one of their A330s down there.
looks like an evacuation is in full swing.

This is the correct answer. Very common in that airspace.
On the subject of the fuel load I suspect the answer is as simple as fuel is cheaper in the UK than at TLV so they were tankering to save money.

Id have thought that was the extreme of wishful thinking when you're dealing with the sort of unreconstructed savage that dimembers babies and massacres and rapes entire music festivals.

It has been many years but I regularly flew BA london to Tel Aviv.I was based there. Always on a BA B767. Shooting an approach down to 200' and then returning to London??? Really? I have my doubts about this. Is it even possibly on BA 767's? If it is and BA management elected to take return fuel to home base during a war..??? Well? What to think about that?

Canadian RCAF is shuttling folks from Israel to Athens Greece where they can continue on commercial transport of their choice.

767 long gone, TLV was a BA 777 :ok: /Airbus mix for a long time, I believe the aircraft involved the other day was a 78..

I think round trip fuel is certainly unusual on that sector but not that mysterious.

Yes it could have been down to cost and availability at TLV in the current circumstances but it's also quite possible that if things hadn't gone to plan (which they obviously didn't) BA decided they wanted the option of getting aircraft, crew and passengers directly back to London, rather than perhaps getting caught up in duty hours problems or who knows what somewhere such as Cyprus or Athens.

On FR24 it was an A350.

It was an A350-1000

Airbus A350-1000

I’d be tankering as much fuel as possible if it were me too….land and get out again ASAP.

Woolston/Flying wild/Lake1092 - many thanks.

Fond memories of LGW -TLV - LGW with heavy crew in the 1980s. Departed on Christmas mornings surrounded by armed police and armoured vehicles. 40 years past now. Not a popular bid for the crews.