Huge changes coming to Matmid in April, including status thresholds
 

Apologies for starting a new thread on this, as I know Houminer started one regarding possible speculated rule changes coming in February with no further information, but this is too big a change to miss... but moderators, if you feel threads should be merged, please do so, and maybe even make this a sticky until changes come into effect?

Generally if you travel Long Haul with LY (like the US etc) you're more likely to benefit from the changes, but if most of your travel is to Europe, this is not good new for you, and leaves the likes of BA etc with a far more attractive proposition.

The changes we know of so far:

1. Points accumulation will be revenue based at 1 point per $10 dollars spent for regular members, and $8 spent for Silver member or higher.

2. Bonus ticket availbility will increase, with the option to pay for your ticket with more points extended.

3. Mixed booking will be possible where one way is paid for with points, and the other cash.

4. Threshold levels for status will be reduces as follows:

Silver - 400 points (down from 500)
Gold - 1000 points (1500)
Platinum 2500 points (3000)
Top Platinum 6500 (7000)

There are a few more changes I believe, but we can post those as more information becomes available.

More changes
 

Also changes to Fly Card Premium benefits:
https://www.elal.com/he/FrequentFlye...d-Holders.aspx

Most notable: 40K ILS in charges a month will now only get you Gold instead of Platinum. Now it will take 80K in charges to get Platinum!

Not surprisingly these changes are not going down well with the majority of regular LY flyers (I'm not talking about Flyertalk where it seems obvious the majority of regulars on here are occasional ElAl flyers, and enthusiasts (a thread about a retro painted aircraft gets more responses than a major divaluation with their FF program...), but it also seems some TAs have raised concern over the new system. They claim that as the points accumulated are based on the actual fare not including any commission, the customer can very easily work out how much the TA actually added to their ticket price.

TBH this makes absolute sense to me, and makes it all a little more transparent, but I wonder how this works with other revenue based FF programs?

I agree
 

UA revenue based earnings
 

UA excludes all taxes and fees when calculating revenue, not just TA additions. I Akari think they pay much smaller commissions to TA's than LY still does.

Can anyone compare LY commissions to other airlines?

most airlines including UA don't do commissions anymore, rather agents charge a booking fee.

LY was a holdout

As reported now by Globes:
https://en.globes.co.il/en/article-e...rms-1001248519

I just don't get it. As the article says, they have such competition from other FF programs, which offer far more flexibility, options to use points, and benefits yet they still go and devaluate Matmid, not giving a damn about their members.
Forgive me if I find it somewhat difficult getting excited about them paining an aircraft in retro colours...

They really have nothing to offer.

With airline consortia liked StarAlliance, OneWorld and others and the fact that Elal is not part of any consortia and therefore at a huge disadvantage, I would have thought that Elal would make a huge effort to make their FF program far better than any other consortia in order to woo back customers.
I guess the prevailing marcom experts and consultants have advised Elal that it is far better to screw its loyal customers than to give FF consortia a run for the money.

That would be absolutely typical of the Israeli business mindset.