T3 lounges state
 

No, in fact as the airport is run on behalf of the employees, and not the passengers, it will get worse before it gets better.

It's dire.

Pretty sad. last time I was there it was a complete zoo. They need a star lounge that's operated by someone other than a lousy local hotel chain...

And a OW one...

Any idea what ElAl will do with their First Class lounge once they discontinue first class service next year?

That's being generous.

TLV must be by far and away UAs largest station without a UA Club or *A lounge.

that and its also one of their most important as well. There aren't many int'l destinations with heavy metal flights from 3 hubs (SFO, 2X EWR , IAD soon), not to mention TK flies a dozen or so flights (plus LX and those lousy LH NEV flights).

Star Alliance flights from TLV:

• Aegean (3-5 daily, to ATH, LCA, SKG and the islands)
• Air Canada (daily to YYZ)
• Air China (3 weekly to PEK)
• Air India (5 weekly to DEL)
• Austrian (3 daily to VIE)
• Brussels Airlines (2 daily to BRU)
• Croatia (1 weekly to ZAG)
• Ethiopian (2 daily to ADD)
• LOT (3-4 daily to WAW and more)
• Lufthansa (5 daily to FRA and MUC)
• Swiss (2 daily to ZRH)
• TAP (daily to LIS)
• Turkish (about 10 daily to IST, SAW and sometimes AYT)
• United (3 daily to EWR and SFO)

In total, it's almost 40 flights a day, about ten of them on widebodies. It's about time for a *A lounge!

Shuly

I'm pretty sure there's plenty of airports in Europe with much more than 40 daily *A flights and no *A lounge... only last month they opened one in AMS.

I don't know if there are that many airports with this many Star Alliance flights and neither a Star Alliance carrier-operated or alliance-operated lounge.

A bit of an imperfect science, but TLV handled about 23 million passengers last year. Taking a look at the Wikipedia list of Europe's busiest airports, numbers 1-27 (Heathrow to Athens) processed more passengers than TLV in 2018.

Of these 27, only ten don't have a Star alliance or carrier-operated lounge: Madrid, Barcelona, London-Gatwick, Moscow-SVO, Paris-Orly, Dublin, Moscow-DME, Palma de Mallorca, Manchester, and London-Stansted. Star Alliance carriers certainly have more capacity out of TLV than the majority of these airports, besides perhaps MAD or BCN (although without doing the math, I think TLV might have more Star Alliance passengers departing on an average day).

Of course, EU airports split departures into Schengen and non-Schengen, so in some cases not all Star Alliance passengers would have access to member- or alliance-operated lounges. The unique thing about TLV is that nearly all passengers would have access.

It's likely just a case of high operating costs in Israel and an airport operator that has an overly-close relationship with an incumbent lounge provider... a real shame.

I don't think the IAA would allow it - they get a share of revenue, what interest would they have in giving up more floor space to earn the same revenue or less?

The whole business model is wrong. If they were paid rent only and not mostly revenue share, then they would want to rent out more space.

I'm just curious, do you know it to be fact that the IIA takes a revenue share from Dan for TLV lounges?

No, but I know that this is the model for all the other concessions at the airport, not just F&B, but also other behind the scenes support activities like handling. If I remember correctly, it was also stated in an article about the new "private terminal"

Presumably they could also make plenty of $ from the rent from a proper lounge that would be equivalent.

Maybe it wouldn't be quite as juicy for them as running a chronically overcrowded lounge with lousy F&B , but last time we were in the lounge it was packed so badly, it was just pathetic.