As many of you know most business passengers on LY flights are from the Israeli high-tech industry, who prefer LY due to the frequent flyer benefits - upgrades and free flights.

In order to cope with the global economy crisis LY published last week a new pricing system (http://www.elal.co.il/ELAL/Hebrew/Ab...ce18012009.htm - press release in Hebrew)
, which actually cancels the need for a minimum stay in the US/far east for low fair booking classes - such as K and Q class, those are up to 30% cheaper than the next class which allowed no minimum stay (S class), however tickets in those (K,Q) booking classes are not upgradeable.

The implication for most high-tech travellers, which have their ticket purchased by their company with the lowest fair available is that from now on, there probably be almost no upgrades on flights to the US/far east and point accumalation will be much slower (K class provides half the points).

I think LY should seriously re-consider changing point accumulation and upgrade rules to be aligned with the new pricing system or otherwise high tech travellers, which are the bread and butter, of El-Al business passenger traffic, will start looking for alternatives...

Are there other guys here from the high-tech insustry who feel as bad as I do about this? What do you guys think ???