Liat, I'm STILL waiting for you to respond to my PM.

Also curious - wouldn't it save LY money to just get rid of the Matmid program entirely?

And then you can fly UA to NYC. A direct flight (like LY, true), with NO fuel surcharge, no $10 fee to issue the ticket, especially not for high level elites, and a r/t ticket in C costs 7 r/t C trips.

BA expires Avios after 36 months of NO ACCOUNT ACTIVITY. As long as I do something like purchase miles for a few bucks, I can extend my Avios another 36 months.

This is ridiculous as there's nothing I can do to prevent points expiring. So if I don't fly enough to get a free flight within 3 years, I've literally just lost points. So it seems that it would make more sense for me to fly BA, UA, etc. since they tend to cost less than LY, (have better websites,) and my miles there don't go to waste.

ELAL FF Program Update...
 

This thread starts to feel like a FLYCARD commercial...

Seems I'm not the only one that feels that way...

http://news.nana10.co.il/Article/?ArticleID=1092438

Indeed.

And there you go doing it again! Why would you come onto FT, a forum of intelligent well informed frequent flyers and try and tell us something which is incorrect. You are being disingenuous and that is not helping you win any friends. It's such an "Israeli" approach but you must understand most of us can see right through it.
European airlines (at least the three majors - BA, AF/KLM, and LH) indeed do expire points but all of them offer fairly simple and inexpensive ways to make sure points do not expire. That's very different to what LY is doing so don't try and fob us off with inaccurate half true information.

I already commented about this above in a long post which you ignored!

Don't take it personally, I'm being ignored by Liat too... ;)

Liat was not here for months.

Only now she came back to sell us the new CC and matmid devaluation.

Much as I get annoyed with EL AL, and especially the pathetic hard product, and much as I am annoyed by the recent harsh devaluation (although my calculations seem to indicate that status-wise I may be a little better off than before), and much as I am tempted to 'jump ship' to BA (as most of my travel is to London) ... I don't see it happening. Why?

I recently requalified as a PL with EL AL. I have almost two months before my new 'year' starts. I may need to travel to London between now and then so I thought I could give BA a try without risking my EL AL status. I recently had a very pleasant flight with them on their 787 from EWR to LHR, so let's see what they have to offer from TLV. We have many Avios points in our family shared BA account (I am a lowly 'blue' card holder) so why not use them? After all, they haven't 'timed out' like EL AL's do!

But: I cannot find any availability of flights on the days and flights I may want to travel between now and the end of December to London - whether as a pure bonus ticket, or as an upgrade. That's SIX WEEKS AHEAD! NOTHING! So what's the point of holding all of those Avios?

I ought to add that I was looking to do the same for the EWR-LHR flight, which I had wanted to book 2 months ahead, not in a particularly busy period either, but NOTHING. In the end I paid for business class, but the cabin was half empty when I flew. When I booked I reckon I was probably one of the first to book. On EL AL there would have been a few seats available in that sort of situation.

Maybe the EL AL system is bad, and maybe it is worse than ever, but at least they have a degree of availability - maybe not a week ahead, but certainly 6 weeks ahead.

So I don't see it as being all that bad, even if it could be better.

mikebg - you make a good point about probably the biggest downside of the BA program. Things change however when you go up in the ranks, Golds get additional award availability in Y and can secure seats if award seats are not available (similarly I think to LY), GGLs get that plus they can book 2 trips (or 3 depending on level) a year for up to 5 people in any cabin with avios by having seats released for them from revenue classes. Although I know little about your travel pattern, as an LY PL I think if you switched all or most of your travel to BA you would probably get to GGL (pm me if you would like to know more). The point you make about better availability is LY's only saving grace together with the fact that you can fly direct from TLV to several destinations.
However bearing in mind that with LY, points will expire within 3 years, if there was even less availability, it would make the program simply useless. At least with BA, I can keep those avios for as long as I like, maybe for a big trip once retired or when I can find availability on BA that coincides with time I can take off work. With BA you can hold on to a stash of avios for many years and whilst they are likely to devalue over time, it can still be the best option for many people.

Well said economyman, and I was just going to post the very same in regards to additional availability once you go up the status ladder.
Just to add, Golds get "gold Priority award" as well, meaning BA will open any seat in any class for double the Avios, which while might not be great value, at times it can come in handy.

With the number of Avios I have I would be in serious trouble if it were with ELAL because there would be no way I could get close to using them within 3 years.

Incidentally, mikebg which class of travel were you looking at?

I'm sorry but that is incorrect.
I was always here but I didn't say anything because I didn't have anything to comment on nor I got questions (except a few in PM) but I don't respond in order to sell you anything just to give answers and assist you like I've always did 'till now.

Business Class

Though availability aint so great on LY either. My father-in-law is thinking of switching to UA. A nice benefit of UA is that there's expanded availability for Premiers. So while a lowly Silver might have more availability of standard Y awards, GS have expanded availability of saver F (and obviously a sliding scale in between). Not to mention that miles don't expire as long as there's any activity on the account (otherwise 18 months of non-activity).

And a pretty bad cc company too!!

Elal Rep
 

The new Elal policy is almost as bad as Yair Lapids 2015 attempted budget plan.