Perhaps these issues have to do with EL AL trying to sell the preferred seats and only release them to status holders a day or so before the flight if those seats go unsold?

I think the issue may relate to the fact that several airlines, including EL AL, have gone the way of trying to sell perks like status seats that were previously reserved for status holders to the general public in order to add revenue. This is an industry trend and the likely scenario will be that status holders across many airlines, such as ourselves, will experience a significant reduction in benefits as those benefits are used by airlines to generate revenue.

Below is a link to an interesting article about upgrade auctions which is a collateral issue to the points I made above. http://blogs.wsj.com/middleseat/2013...ines-are-sold/