EL AL Maintenance, Mechanical and Mishaps
 

I'm stuck in ZRH and to add insult to injury they only give one hour of free wifi in the lounge. At lease they have hot food.

If you're in the terrible Panorama Lounge, you can ask them for more codes. I've found them generally willing to give one.
If you run into resistance, try telling them that your flight was delayed and your trying to use the internet to make alternate arrangements.

The lounge dragon was rather nasty but I just remembered that Amex platinum gives a Boingo wireless account free which I am now using for unlimited internet surfing.

And as bad as this lounge is, it's still better than the Dan lounge at TLV.

Is that Israeli or US AMEX platinum?
I have the Israeli and don't recall such a service being offered.

US Platinum

That's annoying. They've generally old women who seem to love helping younger men :p

Eh, I find the Panorama more spacious than the Dan but worse otherwise

I imagine Boingo wouldn't be so much of a draw to Israeli Amex plat. Is Boingo big internationally or only an American hotpot service? I've only seen it in US airports and hotels

They tend to have roaming partnerships worldwide. At ZRH the wifi is provided by the airport and then charged to various roaming partners, of which Boingo was one. It was quite good once I figured out how to stay on for more than an hour - I could walk through the whole terminal on a skype call over wifi without it dropping. Not bad tech.

.....and how did it end? Were you transferred on a Swiss flight? Or was the plane finally repaired....?

They put me on another LY flight 9 hours later and gave me a meal voucher. ZRH may be one of the only airports in the world where you can get fondue.

They also never answered my email about EU261 compensation so I may have to refer the matter to one of the services like refund.me

Did you really expect them to answer your email? ;)

It's a good thing LY had another flight that day and had space available to put you on it. From my experience LY likes to avoid transferring pax to codeshare flights with other airlines.

EL AL Maintenance, Mechanical and Mishaps
 

This thread is dedicated for discussion of maintenance issues, mechanical upkeep and information on flights which had to be redirected due to similar issues.

LY346
 

LY346 from GVA to TLV had to land in FCO due to a mechanical fault with the lavatories.

Apparently there was an issue on the ground, causing the flight to leave an hour and a half late, and then the issue occurred again during the flight.


http://www.themarker.com/news/aviation/1.2440017

I was on the LY323 that was supposed to leave TLV to CDG at 10:15 and that eventually took off at 22:32... We were kept in the terminal with little information as the FIDS were updated every hour pushing the flight departure for one more hour. The flight had a technical problem. It was taken to the maintenance zone from gate D6 and brought back around 17h. Flight attendants went in and then came back. There were almost a riot cause we were all fed up. The Manager finally came and promised us that the plane would leave. By that time, some angry passengers asked to be removed from the flight and be rebooked onto another one the following day. I asked if I could be put on Turkish Airline but the lovely El Al customer service told me in a rude way: I will not book anyone on another airline. As I was originally booked on AF which was on strike, I gave them a call and they were happy to put me on other airlines but said LY was holding the booking and they could not do anything until LY checked me out of the flight (different mentality). By 20h, the manager reappeared and people started screaming and filming the scene. The manager magically told us that we were to board immediately. But that was just to keep us in the plane while they were repairing a hydraulic system leak. We were sitting in a hot plane for 2 hours while seeing a team of 10 engineers on ladders and with screw driving testing the leakage off the wing. Eventually people stormed out of the plane to disembark or smoke. Flight attendants could not do anything to maintain calm until the pilot came back to us and told us we were now allowed to fly and that the problem was repaired. Flights closed the doors. However, those who left had their luggage in the hold. El AL decided to proceed with these luggage and not delay the flight any further (weird). We finally arrived in Paris at 02:30AM. Worst flight ever. Worst customer service ever. I will avoid EL AL at any cost.

LY323 left at 22:30 instead of 10:15 yesterday because of hydraulic leakage. Was on that flight. So scary.