joshwex90

I disagree that LY's problems are political in nature. They are not the best airline when it comes to someone the world looks up to. Not such great hard products, and the soft product, while decent, doesn't have nearly enough "wow" to make up for it. They're also not an admired company in terms of their business acumen, that it hardly makes sense for any alliance to want them.

If they improve all these issues, they will certainly be a more worthy candidate for an alliance, that if their active initiative to join one is turned down, it would be much easier to say has to do with either them being "politically undesirable" or "not that necessary" (considering the high service already in place to TLV). But right now, it's hard to make those arguments. I also don't think LY has tried hard enough to join one as it is.

NYC2TLV

That is actually NOT the case of how it works in the alliance. Only under a JV agreement do you get the harmonization that you consistently refer to. As part of an alliance, you work individually with each carrier until you integrate to the point you (the carrier) are satisfied with.

Also, there is no need for an alliance if you have the right partners. In LY's case the network does not operate via a real hub and nearly every O&D sold involves a start or finish in TLV. This gives no added value to LY's inclusion into an alliance. As such, if it is such a daunting task for them to get to the point where they could be sponsored for membership, then they should be working with the tools they have to make themselves stronger. Code shares/SPA agreements are the way to go. QF knows this. This is why they abandoned their OneWorld partner for Emirates on operations to LHR. Air New Zealand, a very well run airline, knows this too. Opting to work with Cathay Pacific even though they are in different alliances.

This cannot be the end all be all of a healthy LY.

ELY001

The harmonization I spoke of has to do with points accrual, reciprocal lounge access as well as treatment of elites. It also has to do with delays. Last time I flew EL AL was back in August of 2011. I was suppose to fly back to EWR the day the hurricane hit New York. My flight was obviously cancelled. EL AL informed me that I would need to wait 1 week to get a seat on a flight back to New York on their metal. When I inquired as to whether they can book me on another airline so I can return to New York quicker, they told me they cannot because they don't have the necessary agreements with other airlines to do so (even though they had a codeshare agreement with AA). As a result, I ended up staying at Ben Gurion Airport for 36 hours and was able to get on the first flight back to New York (after significant haggling with the ticketing office people) with another EL AL NY bound stranded passenger I met at the airport.

Had EL AL been in an alliance, they could have easily re-booked me on a partner airline instead of 1 week later on their metal. This is the benefit of an alliance; should a schedule be interrupted for whatever reason you can lean on your partner carriers. Unless EL AL can arrange the exact same sort of relationship with codeshare partners and enable the free and full recognition of elite status and benefits with every codeshare partner then they fall far short of being able to recreate the benefits of an alliance without being in one.

Also, the Qantas and Air NZ example you highlight are instances where these carriers form codeshare agreements extraneously to their alliance membership. Alliance member airlines are not forbidden from engaging in extraneous codeshare agreements with carriers outside the alliance. Neither of these two south Pacific carriers withdrew their membership in their respective alliances (One World and Star). What they did is form a separate codeshare agreement with airlines outside their alliance for the purpose of one or two routes in their network in order to generate value added benefits for themselves and their fliers on top of the ones they enjoy as members of an alliance. Clearly, if being in an alliance was not worth it, neither of these two airlines would remain in one and would simply go the codeshare route.

Even Shkedy sees the benefits of being a member of an alliance as oppose to code share agreements. He attempted to spearhead the creation of a forth alliance, called the "WE" alliance, which was to include notables such as Russia's UTAir, Ukraine's AeroSvit (which is now being liquidated) and Armenian carrier Armavia, however that idea went nowhere fast.

http://www.travelweekly.com/Travel-N...line-alliance/

NYC2TLV

Every time an American Airlines or El Al flight is canceled, the reservations agents are instructed to perform an involuntary re-route. The difference in approaches is that while AA will do all necessary to route the customer and keep that customer happy, LY instructs their reservations agents only to search for LY metal over the Atlantic to reduce costs. The fact of the matter is that they are more than able to route passengers via the code share through CDG, LHR, BCN etc. but will not do so in order to keep the revenue within LY.

Part of this is also the reason why the first flights out on LY are blocked off entirely from the reservations system. This way, revenue management and the specific heads of reservations can decide who needs to have a seat reserved and the rest of the seats are reserved for the airport where LY always expects a large walk-up crowd.

This is part of the LY system that needs to change. The focus needs to be more on the customer experience as they have lost the trust of the market.

EXACTLY! This means that they can do business with LY! The point being that the alliance will come later. They should be going after the companies that can assist them in filling their aircraft. They didn't do this in Europe enough and left the market open to new entrants in airberlin and SAS.

They should be doing this in India and the Far East. New agreements with Air India, Thai and Cathay to take passengers to points beyond, for a free sale of TLV via these carriers as well as a full integration into the Matmid program.

But you have said it yourself that the man is clueless. Hence, I wouldn't then turn around and side with him.

nombody

Regarding the codeshare partners that El Al has, I would ask them to start filling in the gaps in El Al's schedule due to shabbat. El Al has code shares with American, Swiss, Iberia, Air China, and Thai Air I believe. Out of those 5, Only Swiss and Iberia actually fly to Israel.

They should work on getting American, Air China, and Thai to actually fly their own planes to Israel for the Friday/Saturdays, and maybe one other day each week. This would allow El Al to have a semblance of a normal 7 day a week schedule without actually flying El Al planes on Shabbat.

Additionally, if they're going to have a codeshare with Iberia, can someone explain why there is an LY Metal / IB codeshare flight that from Madrid 10 minutes before a IB Metal / LY Codeshare flight to TLV? Why have two identical flights running at the exact same time with your codeshare partner, instead of spacing them out so they are staggered throughout the day.

NYC2TLV

The aircraft scheduling teams sometimes can't take into account the code share partners and have to make use of slots/aircraft availability. Another good example of this are the flights between EWR and OSL on UA and SK. They are so close in schedule and neither fills up in the winter. One should probably just turn their flight into a seasonal service.

mkilmo

Reminds me of one day where both LY to BRU (LY/SN code share back then), and SN to BRU (again, LY/SN) both left at the same exact hour... Both flights have LY/SN numbers, and even though I hid in the lounge till the final call, I am sure there was a lot of mess of people trying to get to the right plane.

NYTA

AZ once had 2 flights to TLV from FCO that left within 15 minutes of each other. I never understood why they did that.

LY777

CX has 2 daily flights from HKG to CDG : one leaving at 00.05, and the other at 00.55...

NYTA

That just seems like a prescription for getting an A380 and making it one flight.

NYC2TLV

שקדי: מחירי הטיסות בשנתיים האחרונות היו יקרים מאי פעם

Interesting quote from Elyezer Shkedi. It seems that because LY is not in an alliance, they believe that by adding new members to the Matmid club, this will translate into revenue. I fail to see how signing up random passersby at a trade show translates into sales. If anything, it costs LY money as they still send those plastic cards.

The other interesting quote is that prices are at an all-time high. I don't think that this is 100% true. Here is one limited example:

Escape from New York City

ELY001

NYC2TLV,

Wasn't that also the purpose behind the "Globaly" campaign/program? As far as I understood it, Shkedy created that program thinking that if LY managed to sign up every Jewish person they could, somehow it would encourage them to both visit Israel and fly with EL AL on those trips.

Though it is a nice gesture and marketing gimmick, I would be interested in seeing hard data showing how much revenue was actually generated through signing everyone they could up for the "Gloably" and Matmid programs.

NYC2TLV

It is so sad that I completely forgot about the GlobaLY program. Any time a passenger would call reservations, they would try to sign them up for Matmid even if they didn't want to book El Al. All to make the quota.

Also, they used to trick revelers at Yom Ha'atzmaut parties etc. outside Israel by making them believe that they could win a ticket if they signed up for Matmid/GlobaLY.