Flight was delayed from 01:00 to 05:00, and they then returned about 2 hours in, arriving in Israel again at 09:00.

They said engine on board, not de-icing

LY96 PEK-TLV been delayed now for over 24 hours following a technical fault with the 763 due to operate the flight.

No idea what the failure was.

24 hours delay......
 

I am certainly among the craziest fans of El Al and am living in a very unique El Al museum.....BUT..... I would never consider flying El Al on such a long route...! El Al is using outdated Boeing 767s which not only do not offer the comfort modern airplanes are offering but are much less reliable when it comes to honor schedules. The level of chutzpah to use such planes is a shame and I truly wonder how El Al is able to fill these antiquated Boeings with passengers.

But since the planes are full anyway, there's no incentive to offer anything better. So the same old policies as with the 707s and 742s are still valid and applied.

They are able to do this the same way they are able to charge absurd prices from TLV-LAX - they have a monopoly on the nonstop flight on that route.

LY320 cancelled today due to mechanical failure (4X-EKJ)

And for the benefit of of those unfamiliar with every LY flight number or aircraft registration, LY320 is a CDG-TLV flight and 4X-EKJ is a B738.

Actually, El Al has no Monopoly, anyone else might introduce nonstop flights on this route. El Al prices remain higher anyway, also flights from GVA are usually cheaper with Swiss tickets (even when flying on El Al planes....)

Now that the oil price are temporarily down, the management must feel very happy about its antiquated fleet of 744s and 763s..... ;-)

The fact that no one else has introduced flights gives them monopolistic pricing power. Not to mention that not "anyone" can start flights - only registered US and Israeli airlines. And there's no real threat from Arkia or Israir, leaving it to really just UA, AA, and DL. And based on AA's history with Israel, and UA and DL's respective relationships with LAX (one dwindling and one focusing NOT on the ME), don't expect any of them to come up so soon with a competing flight

Moderator Note
 

An LY 737 to CDG returned to TLV following a technical fault with the air pressure system.

Not sure which aircraft this was...

In Hebrew:
http://www.ynet.co.il/articles/0,7340,L-4693662,00.html

EKI

MIL was on flight to Amsterdam last night (due 8pm). It was diverted to Dusseldorf, pax were offloaded, waited 3 hours in terminal then collected luggage and taken to AMS by coach - arriving at 5am. Anyone know what was the cause?
I see that return from AMS has been rescheduled to 1400 today.

How long is the bus ride from Dusseldorf to Amsterdam?

It's about 2.5 hours on the train so probably more than that by bus.

It's around 2.5 hours, depending on how fast the coach goes..
But any ideas on what happened?

Thanks