How is israir?
 

Yes, I know this is an El-AL forum, but does anyone have israir experience?

heard a comedian saying LY as second-rate airline are over--that's why for him, as a comedian, he's happy there is now israir.

my friends who have flown it were not as happy as they were with ly.

It reminds me of Tower Air's lousy service.

Israir's flights to New York are a changing experience. Until not so long ago they had a long term lease on an Icelandair 767 doing the route. That plane was returned a couple of months ago. Since they had a Neos 767 for a short while and now until March they have a World Airways MD11 on the route. From March 2008 they will have a long term lease on an A330 that will be the permenant plane on the route and will make Israir the first Israeli airline with all European fleet (Airbuses and ATRs).

In terms of service, on board product etc. I found Israir to be like an Egged bus for twelve hours. I took it from Tel Aviv's Ben Gurion to New York's JFK when I moved to the United States because it was the cheapest one way ticket. It was the longest flight to the United States I had ever had. The one nice thing was that the meal had a pita and hummus, but El Al's meals (the ones from New York, catered by Borenstein Caterers) recently have included pitot and hummus as well.

Do you think the on board service will improve? I do not think it has anything to do with who’s plane it is.

Very True.

Are they usually on time?

Does anybody have any information from where the leased A330 comes from and how old it is? I just know it has a spanish registration and was at SRTechniques at ZRH for maintanance and probably it got painted there also, it left for TLV wednesday evening. What kind of seating will the plane have and is the plane equiped with an IFE AVOD system and lie flat Business Class seats?

The plane has an Israeli registration already - 4X-ABE (last registration was EC-KDF). It's a pretty new plane - delivered Feb 2007. The plane arrived Israel on Wednesday evening and is planned to depart on the maiden flight to JFK on Sat night.

It is supposed to have personal IFE (not sure about AVOD) in coach but not the best Business class.

Well since they are a charter airline, and change all their flights times at the last minute, I guess that they are on time. If not, they will change the date of the flight or hour or both.

I read that the legroom is terrible on Israir?

Yeah that is pretty new then. Did the plane fly with another airline before already or was it just with the leasing company?

Does the New A330 have personal IFE's in coach(economy) class ? and how is the room and service?

Here's a look at the A330 (video in Hebrew). It's a shame that they did not include shots of the seats.