El Al Matmid - Matmid vs AA

Hi -

I am going to be making Alyiah later this fall and for work i will travel to Asia about 2-3 times a year, plus 1-2 or more to the US.

Currently I have an AA account (as well as UAL, *A).

My quesiton is, is it worth it to sign up for Matmid and start getting points, instead of my AA miles.

Also - Is there any way to get around the sign up fee?

If you fly mostly Y, stay with AA, miles never expire, and you can redeem internationally (redeeming non-direct routes with LY is not a good use of your miles). This is because the status you may lose with AA (and the one you won't gain with LY) is not a real issue.

If you fly mostly C/F, it's probably better to join Matmid. The status is expected to give you sufficient amount of benefits to cancel the problematic redeeming experience).

To get away with registration fee, you can try one of the followings:
1. check with your company (LY has special offers to companies).
2. do a short army service.
3. call LY, and tell them you are an Ole Hadash, and you have status XXX in AA, and would like to "convert" to the pure joy LY is. They may even do a status match depending on XXX, your flight habits, and if your company gives them a lot of business.

I only fly in Y, unless i use miles/points to upgrade

I current have few miles and no status with AA. I have lots of UAL miles, and am on my way to *A Gold. But *A doesn't seem to have good flights from TLV to Asia

2. do a short army service.
.

What does that have to do with anything? Does LY offer discounted rates to (former) members of the Israeli Army?

I only fly in Y, unless i use miles/points to upgrade

I current have few miles and no status with AA. I have lots of UAL miles, and am on my way to *A Gold. But *A doesn't seem to have good flights from TLV to Asia

I only fly to Asia from TLV. How many times a year will you fly?

I only fly to Asia from TLV. How many times a year will you fly?

Best guess is 2-3 times to Asia and 2x to USA

What does that have to do with anything? Does LY offer discounted rates to (former) members of the Israeli Army?

They used to have a promotion for soliders who wanted to open matmid account. They gave it for free + some bonus points.

The weird thing is that most soliders cannot fly more than once a year, so my guess is that they tried to convince them to have an account just before they finish their army duty, "encouraging" them to take the big trip with ElAl (rather then RJ to the east, or Iberia to south america).

Best guess is 2-3 times to Asia and 2x to USA

So assuming 5 times a year X 400 points for a more expensive Y class ticket you are talking about 2K points / year if you go with LY Matmid. That makes you a Gold member but with so few trips I'm not sure how high you'll be on the upgrade list.

AA doesn't fly to Israel and I'm not certain you can credit flights to Asia with LY on your AA card. If you can, great.

On the other hand if you go with TG you can use the TG-LY codeshare and credit flights to TG which is part of Star Alliance. In Asia you can use TG to get around. To the US you have many options including direct flights on Continental or flights through Europe on Lufty, Swiss, Austrian, BMI, etc. Star Alliance Gold you get with 50K TG miles earned so you should have no problem.

I'd suggest you go with BD's program which would give you easier requal but I'm not sure you can credit the LY-TG codeshare TLV-BKK to a star alliance carrier other than TG.

2. do a short army service.


I was looking for something to encourage me to join the IDF, now I've got the push, i'll join in order to save the 20 dollars enrolling in the matmid program;)