EL AL needs to fly on the Sabbath
 

I am Jewish but I am not religious and thus will travel on any day. 90 percent of the Jewish population is not religious. El Al is loosing money by not using their a/c on the Sabbath. The parking fees at the airport for the a/c is expensive.

Yeah, what a bunch of "loosers".
I just wonder if politics plays any part in their flight schedule, ya think?

Are there government regulatory reasons why they couldn't fly on such days?

If that's not it and LY management thought that it made market sense to fly on such days, why wouldn't they do it?

They would lose a fairly significant portion of their customer base. That portion has no problem flying an airline that flies on the Sabbath when it is owned by non-Jews but does have a problem when that airline is owned by Jews.

Funny this is brought up after not so long ago it was discussed throughly over an incident where LY flew on Shabbat.

To make a long story short, the airline was on the verge of losing the religious customer base and out of their own free will signed an agreement to avoid a boycott. They had a chance to open a new page and start flying 7 days a week and turned it down for their own reasons. This was under no government regulatory or other political reasons - probably pure business.

Shouldnt we forget about ourselves for a minute and try to remember that ElAl is still the safest airline in the world. I dont think the Airline Security is the only one watching over us;) . I know this may sound cheesy, but G-D Respects those who respect his day of rest.

So LY management doesn't think it makes market sense to fly on the Sabbath then.

El Al is accomodating those Jews who choose not to fly on shabbat. Since El Al is owned by Jewish proprietors, frum (observant) Jews such as myself would not fly El Al if they knew the airline was committing a transgression of Jewish, biblical matter. Consequently resulting in the loss of thousands of currently loyal customers.

If you want to fly to Israel on shabbos, you have a myriad of other options:
TLV Direct: Delta (ATL), Continental (EWR), Air Canada (YYZ)
1-Connection: BA, Lufthansa, Austrian, LOT, Iberia, Malev, Alitalia, Swiss, AF, KLM

Sounds like great marketing to me. Of course, Southwest, AirTran and jetBlue can properly say, "We've never been hijacked in our company's history."

so when will jet blue fly ONT-TLV?

I respect that this is your feeling on the matter. I wonder if you'll feel the same way, though, if LY ever faces extinction in part b/c it doesn't fly a 7 day schedule. I expect most of us think that's 'never going to happen'. But a lot of things were never going to happen, until they did.

EL AL is a privately owned airline. They have already done their calculations, and decided that their future does not involve a 7 day schedule. It is rumoured that when the 'unofficial' religious boycott of EL AL was running recently, they were losing in the region of NIS 1m per day. The increase in passenger numbers would have to be very substantial in order to offset both the loss of religious passengers (many of whom are very frequent flyers on prime routes) and the additional salary costs involved in hiring workers for Shabbat.

I don't think you understood my point. Yes, as the world exists today, they view a shabbat-driven schedule as a necessity - not because they don't want/need 7 days, but because it would drive away a huge slice of their customer base. (I'm sure there's an appropriate theoretical economic term for this conundrum, but I don't know what it is.)

That, however, is a far cry from saying credibly that their business doesn't suffer as a result of this need/decision. The airline is clearly in trouble as a result of many factors, any of which could be contributing factors to its failure. If LY ever does collapse, one won't be able to say that shabbat was the sole culprit, but it will almost certainly be one of them.

Against that backdrop one may be faced to ask: Is it better to stand by your feeling that no Jew should be in the business of flying on Shabbat, so much so that you take your business to non-Jews who DO, even if it contributes to the demise of the Jewish business? Does that really get you the result you were seeking?

Yes, I'm off topic here but can I get Kreplach on EL AL?

Yes, and yes. There is no legitimate reason whatsoever in Jewish law for desecrating Shabbat in order to achieve economic ends. You may not personally like that statement, but Jewish law is quite unequivocal about the matter.

However, I do not think this discussion really has anything significantly new to add insofar as EL AL's situation is concerned.