Maybe it's only me but in the past 4 flights last month I felt that
the service is not as it used to be>
1. I was flying F to LAX and the young girl in the check in told me to
go to a C counter and not F.
The lady at that counter wasn't "happy" when I asked her to escort me
through security. She called the manager and argued with her.
I left and did it by myself.
The male F/A on the flight was very good but the lady was very bad.
The male went to sleep and the lady started talking with the pilots and didn't open the curtain even once in 2 hours.
A family of 7 woke up and wanted breakfast. She didn't call for help
and it was a disaster...It took her more than an hour to serve them.

I ordered a car at the check in to take me to terminal 7.
I asked about it when we land and the woman at LAX said that I can walk.
It is only 15 min walk... :-) I was amazed by her answer.

2. I came back via EWR.
the lounge in the Marriott is a pain in the A***S
The First class section was full with 15 people although there are only 12 seats.
I have found out later that only 1 of them was on F with me. One woman
was in C and the rest were sitting in Y.
The service was better but the F/A did a lot of noise when we went to sleep.
The galley was a meeting room to many friends and I had to ask them to leave.

3. TLV to AMS was great in C with Israel Markovitz as F/A.
We had 3 F/A in C with a very good service.
I came back one day later and we had only one old lady F/A.
She was very bad. Even AirFrance F/A are nicer then her.
There are too many things to tell about her but my broken English
can not express it :-)

4 TLV to SXF was bad again with only one F/A in C
5 TLV to BRU was very good with 2 F/A in C

I think that Elal are putting some none qualified F/A in F and in C from
time to time. Or maybe they are saving and have less F/A on a flight.

I have decided to fly tonight in C and also next month in C (To NY )

Am I the only one feeling it or do I expect too much?
Lior M

My experience is (almost always) the opposite. I have found the quality of service has improved steadily (both in First and in business) over the years. However, there exceptions.

I recall one flight where the female F/A was rather lazy early on in the flight. The purser came to the First cabin and introduced himself to all of the passengers. When he came to me he told me that I was lucky to have one of the best F/As they had. I replied (politely) that she had actually been completely lazy and had not been doing her job properly. She must have been given a telling off, because from then on she was great!

If I ever have a negative flight experience (or for that matter a particularly excellent experience) I always write to EL AL customer services. No business can ever improve without customer feedback, so you have a vested interest in writing to give such feedback if you want things to improve. I know for a fact of a number of things which have been changed as a direct result of some of my feedback.

I too have had the opposite experiences as LiorM has recently had. Most recently, I was in the lounge for first class at the Newark Liberty International Airport Marriott and it was great. I was there early, had the first class area practically to myself (one other person using a laptop quietly) and there was food available! Not like the garbage that they had in the British Airways lounge in the terminal. Plus, the fact that you're outside the airport, it feels much more like a lounge and not an airport lounge, completely relaxed.

There is one remaining spot within the airport for a lounge to be built. I really hope that El Al pursues it, but until then, this is a great alternative.

Return from Europe C Class service most of the times is a bad one...,
You need to "understand" the F/A... they came with the previous flight,
the help on cleaning the plane, and they need to serve you on the way back.
If its a nightly flight and there were delays, its even getting worse.
My last flight from paris to tel-aviv, the parser was looking sleepy
even before the take off...
I understand the F/A, I dont understand EL-AL, They should make sure
such things doesnt happen even if it means leaving an additional crew
to be fresh for the flight back - We pay good money for that.
(90% of my flights are in C)

Lounge:
EWR was always a pain, Even with the new one... I dont find comfortable,
This is why i like to fly from JFK... But EL-AL have a big problem... too many
Golds / PLs which dont fly business but still access the lounge (I have nothing
against it, i do this as well sometimes).
The issue is that you end up with a small lounge (well it also soemtimes in KD in TLV) which is overloaded with people, My last flight from paris, they went
out of food! no place to seat and so on.
Its impossible to have 24 seats in business and a lounge with 60+ people
when the lounge is built for ~50

As for F class, The service i got was always very good, My female favorite F/A is Shalhevet, Male is Ran...

Thanks,
Eran.

Is this Shalhevet have red/blonde hair? If she is the one that I remember from Y-cabin, she was awful.

Will get her last name on my next flights... will keep you update...
I think that normally whoever does first, does only business...
they wont go down to economy...

Economy class of EL-AL is the worse thing i ever seen...
If its night flights, you will barly see F/A (they all go to sleep),
They are very rude (true that not all of them but 95% of them)
they act like they are doing you a favour... bahh...

well maybe we should open a thread for the best/worst F/A competition
i promise to give personally the results to romano 8-)

I did the C class on 744 001 to JFK
The 2 female and one F/A were very good.
Even very very good.
I feel like i a casino. It's a 50/50 cahnce.

Looks like some F/A don't know know that ELAL service improved so much.

The seats on the 744 are so bad...
When are they going to change them??????

LiorM

I think it is well-known on FT that I am not much of an El Al fan. My problems with it, however, are restricted to the front office and some of its ground people.

Maybe I have been unusually lucky, but I have always had excellent service from the FAs -- and I can usually be found in Economy.

Dear Lior,

We view very seriously the claims raised in your post, and would like to assure you that we invest a lot of efforts training all of our ground and air crews in order to maintain the quality of the services we offer to our passengers. We would appreciate if you could turn to the VIP service center and provide them with all the relevant details that will allow us to conduct a thorough inquiry of the incident.

Best regards
EL AL Rep.

With that I agree.
I usually find the FA very nice and friendly in Economy.

Just flew Platinum - Very disappointed

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I havent been flying a lot in the past 7 months. Since january flew to Europe twice (returned First from London) once to HKG (returned First from HKG) and now in NY.

I just landed this morning on LY027 and was VERY VERY VERY dissapointed with what is left with ELAL PLATINUM.
Its missing the the extra feeling the class used to have. I felt the same on the outbound flight to HKG and I felt it again last night. The thing i was most disappointed with was the meal:

1. First course had a small salad and a medium sized plate with a SMALL portion of Tuna Salad and some antipasti. Tuna salad is not clasy for dinner. Wasnt very nice looking, the tuna salad and the antipasti only covered a third of the plate, the rest of the plate of empty. The salad was small, the greens in the salad were not very interesting the the dressing was not so good. My neighbour had a Special Kosher meal which looked much much better. I noticied my meal was prepared by TAMAM, EL AL has two cateres from TLV (TAMAM and ELCHEF). It always seems the TAMAM meals are BAD.
2. I was also disappointed that there were no options for salad dressings, no olive oil and balsamic/lemon. Some airlines have these cute small olive oils they give out with nice bread and sea salt. - The most depressing thing on the tray was the cheap salt and pepper sacks. they were the typical paper sacks you see in any Economy class.
The tray did not look good, and I have seen better trays with more choice in Economy on some airlines. Its a late night flight, and I was surprised they dont invest on more starters and tappas style food. (like in FIRST)
3. they did have three options for main course Chicken, Salmon and Ravioli - But I think its time they invest in new options.

Breakfast - was much better, but not so interesting choice of breads and choice for food. They allow a choice between slad or omelette. I asked them for the omelette with a bit of salad onthe side - i think they should give both "large" salad and omolette. I also think they should give a large bowl for anyone that wants to mix the granola with yoghoirt and fruits.
That tuna salad from dinner should be offered for breakfast. They also had some cream cheece and smoked salmon, which is pointless without bagels.

The service by the flight crew was very good as usual.

The new Platinum seats are cramped and a bit too short for me. I want to see what they will do once DL has their new flat seats in all 772 and CO come out with new BusinessFirst.
First was EMPTY, one pax.
They should have those First seats as Platinum and have only half the 777/744 have new suite style First seats for LY001, 005, 075, 315. Those are the only flights that really need First Class.

Thanks for your answer.
I will try to get one F/A name that I think needs to refresh her knowledge about working in C class...
I just came today from NY and everything was very good.
(just a lot of noise from the kitchen)
I hate to pay 6000$ for a good sleep without beeing able to do it

I wish that one day, all F/A all over the world ,will talk in a very quite voice
while pax are sleeping.
They always wake me up in the middle of the night with the loud conversation
they have in the kitchen...

I have F to NY and F to HKG next month , I will update you all.

LiorM