Other Middle East and Africa Frequent Flyer Programs - Israeli Capacity Agreement with European carriers soon

http://news.airwise.com/stories/2004/09/1095150414.html

interesting thanks for the link.
I can see the carriers reasons for wanting to keep it as is, nboth Swiss and Altalia are on very hard times and make nice $$$ on these flights. especially since the planes land and take off again, no having to house any crew over night etc.
I can understand wanting to protect LY but then again if these carriers kept flying during the hard times when others dropped it they should get alittle leeway. And LY is code sharing with some of them as well.

While I understand LY's position, I fail to understand how they can seriously claim that the European carriers are competing on unfair terms. If anything, I would think that the Israeli gov't would want as much cheap service to TLV as possible to bring in visitors and their money. Propping up LY by restricting the ability of the EU carriers to bring connecting traffic from the USA seems like a classic example of shortsighted protectionism.

Thanks for the article, Bretteee.

[<<EU carriers to bring connecting traffic from the USA seems like a classic example of shortsighted protectionism. <<

El Al has to be protected. In time of war most carriers drop TLV and are unreliable.

Lufthansa and Swiss had already signed an agreement, Alitalia probably will soon. LH gets to keep its current two daily (widebody) flights to FRA, will not introduce TLV-BER and TLV-MUC.

Shuly

TLV - MUC was dropped by LH a while ago because of lack of demand. This is the deal LH was looking for all along. Keep capacity on the FRA route, give LY exclusive rights for MUC and Berlin.