When is el al going to finally have a proper and good reservation system????????????????
ok, so we have been complaining about this since 2005 - but its already 2008!!!!!
almost the end of the first decade of the 21st century and the website SUCKS.


1. I cant believe its not possible to decide on which class fare you want to book. They only give you the cheapest option. But for some of us, we are actually interested in paying for Q, S, I, etc fares so that we can get more miles and/or upgrades. There should be an option to allow us to pick the class we want to fly on. Sometimes there is not a big difference between I and C class fares, and we should be able to decide what fare we want to fly on. I recently wanted to book to HKG, and the difference between the I and C class fare was only $150. For me, i would rather get the C class because I get more miles and i raise my chances to get upgraded to First.

2. I just tried on the website to get a ticket for 2 people NYC - TLV in May, and for some strange reason they only showed the return with Ly027 (eventhough there are more than 4 flights that day and all are available - the flight is in May).

3. This is stupid but still - they have pics with the old uniform from more than seven years ago.

Ill give them a few more weeks, maybe they are waitin got introduce he new internet system when the LY reservation system transfers from CARMEL to AMADEUS.

I could not agree more!
And the crazy thing is, they used to have that option not that long ago, and for some reason it has gone.
Pethetic...

I"ll do you all one better - they are no longer paying commissions as on Jan 1 to travel agents for some routings - which means the TA's are now tacking on a service charge. When other airlines have done it, the purpose was to get pax to buy through the web - BUT WE CAN'T!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!1

This is not true... there was a decision in 2007 that all flights orginated outside of israel will be without comissions, and this decision was postponed
on the 02/01... (It was published on Hozer 04/08).

I think when they will stop paying comissions, we will simply start buying
cheaper tickets due to competition...

Regarding Web site and Competition -
As I wrote before I really do love LY (Silly me)
However they have 2 major flaws:
1. The web site - Cannot book Y/S/ etc tickets - See above
1.1. It crashes all the time
1.2. It get stuck all the time
1.3. Try to do more than one search at the same time and you will get funny results :-)
2. Prices - The LY prices are ridiculous! Their C or F pricing are crazy compared to the product that they provide - So I am not sure LY knows the meaning of the word "competition".

I Agree with everything you write on the website... It sucks...
and i think its mainly due to the carmel... i am not sure moving to the new
one will make any changes but at least they wont be able to use carmel
as an excuse.

As for the competition... When EL-AL wants... EL-AL can... you forgot the
days lufthansa and elal did some power games over seats... but
this is indeed between companies... as for the travel agents, I believe
that there is around 15% that can be cut there if EL-AL will sell directly...

But i think that everyone over here (i didnt managed to count many),
are more corporate people, where you make few changes for the same
ticket, you all probably check availbility of flights and places...
Nothing will replace the TA... they will simple need to earn less...

I know that today we get from our TA around 4% discount on everyone
else prices on top of that if we fly S, Y, C, I we can a discount from ELAL
for corporate flyers... We got a proposal for better discount from another
TA...

Beside, No one point a gun to your head and make you fly with EL-AL...
you can switch an airline everyday and if its due to that EL-AL is more
expensive i am sure your boss will be more than happy... 8-)

Thanks,
Eran.

You have missed my point - I am not talking about cooporate travel (which is paid usually by big companies which have their own discounts) - I am talking about private travel.
I WANT to fly LY but I do not understand their pricing... AF/Austrian/Swiss is half their price for most places in C, BA is 75% their price to all of Asia almost...
The excuse that they fly direct does not cut it for me - When you fly in C/F this should be less of a factor IMHO.
Anyway, let us all pray (B&H) that they will improve their web site.

Just adding my 0.02 - it is impossible to book DME-TLV-DME trip, since drop down list for origin doesn't have Moscow, only destination list has. This is especially weird, considering they even has a russian version of website, and Moscow is one of their major destinations.

No, I didnt... I think we are both broadcast on different waves...,
EL-AL does 1m$ from each tourist seat, and 2m$ from each
business seat.... this numbers are for coporate users...
Romano doesnt care about the private users...

and for the original question

use the +3 days option when you do the reservation.
It will give you a table and when you move the mouce on the cells
it will tell you the classes that you can order

I hope it helps

Lior

The Russian version of the website is not for Russia citizens but for the 1 Million plus ex-Russians in Israel. It does not have much to do with flights originating in Russia.

I'm not sure exactly how it works but in order for a destination to appear on the "from" list on the website, the airline has to have something like a global ticketing authority for flights originating in that country and LY do not have this for all their destination. For places that do not appear on the list you have to contact a local travel agent. I have noticed that some global sites like Orbitz.com do not support flights originating in DME as well.

That is interesting information. I didn't realize this but it makes sense.

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Eran, It would be nice if TA can go back to the days when LY gave 15-20% comiss! but now the highest on LY is about 10% the average being 4%

i didnt have a problem seeing what class they are offering, i wanted to be able to book a higher class than the one offered.