Israel Flights News Roundup

16
DDMS IconNever Miss Another Deal - Follow DansDeals on Facebook

Related posts:
-Random Airline News That I’d Be Remiss Not To Cover
-What You’ve Missed If You’re Not On DDF
-More Info On Recent Price Mistakes
10 Random Links
Random Travel Tips Of The Day
Random Posts You May Have Missed If You’re Not On DDF…
-USAirways: We’ll Honor Israel Tickets But No Miles If You Skip A Leg
—————————————————————————————-

-El Al can fly to Istanbul once again.
As I covered in-depth in the “random airline news” post linked to above, outgoing CEO Shkedy had wanted Turkish banned from flying to Israel saying that not being able to fly to Istanbul was going to bankrupt the airline.
Of course the reality is that El Al has very little to gain by flying to Istanbul what they really wanted was to stop the low-fares that Turkish offers for flights between the US and Israel.  Most of the Istanbul-Tel Aviv traffic are connecting low-fare seekers or people who appreciate the award winning service that Turkish offers in coach, premium economy, and lie-flat business class with an incredible lounge to boot.  There’s even free WiFi on their flights.
So El Al didn’t get what they really wanted.  Cheap flights will continue and that’s a great thing for the country of Israel. El Al needs to figure out how to compete and it’s all laid out in that previous post.

—————————————————————————————-

-Tel Aviv has been called the most profitable route for several airlines over the years thanks to high fares and full flights.  However while Continental, Delta, United, and USAirways cashed in, American had to sit on the sideline as ex-TWA employees threatened to get a court injunction in Israel to seize any American plane that landed on Israeli soil to pay for pensions owed to ex-TWA employees.  That’s pretty murky as American didn’t buy TWA, they only bought select assets.  Nevertheless American was never able to make a deal with them.

Now those ex-TWA employees are seeking out restitution once again thanks to the American-USAirways merger.  It will be very interesting to see how this plays out.  There are so many questions at play here:
-Does American settle and keep flying to Israel?
-Does American decide the costs and risks are too high and discontinue flying to Israel?
-Will an Israeli court allow the ex-TWA employees to seize an American plane if they keep flying without settling?
-Will the American/El Al partnership break up as the Delta/El Al partnership did once Delta started flying to Israel?
-And of course even if they do settle will the Philadelphia-Tel Aviv flight survive or will it move to other hub markets with higher Origin/Destination revenue potential like JFK or Miami? Or can the market support American flights to Tel Aviv from 2 or all 3 of those cities?

If I were a betting man I’d say we see a settlement and we’ll see American flights to Tel Aviv from JFK and Miami while  Philadelphia loses their Tel Aviv flight as the hub there begins to shrink.

I can also see United flying from their Chicago or possibly even their San Francisco hub to Tel Aviv within the next few years as well as their massive fleet of 787s continues to grow.  Chicago has more Origin/Destination traffic and is a more logical connecting point while San Francisco offers high-yielding tech market airfares and good connections from the west coast.  I’ve long argued that Chicago is more likely while DDF airline guru PlatinumGuy has argued that San Fran is more likely.  The 2 of us were invited to an official United DO last year where we heard from a network planning executive that they often have that very same debate between the network planning folks who argue for Chicago and the revenue guys who want to grab the SFO high-yield traffic.  Either way he said to stay tuned once the 787-9 series aircraft start rolling in…

—————————————————————————————-

-In the “What you’ve missed if you’re not on DDF” post linked to above I wrote about a DDF poster who got a $160 refund for having his Philadelphia-Toronto flight cancelled, bringing down the cost of his round-trip glitch ticket to Israel from $302 to $142..

Now another DDF’er who merely had his flight from Philadelphia-Toronto delayed told the agent that the delay wouldn’t work for him and the agent cancelled the flight and issued a $172 refund.

Plus they’ll both keep their miles!  Some people who skipped the Philadelphia-Toronto leg have reported that United and USAirways have taken out their miles from those flights several weeks after they were credited.  Still no reports of Aegean taking debiting miles credited to them from the USAirways flights.

Leave a Reply

16 Comments On "Israel Flights News Roundup"

All opinions expressed below are user generated and the opinions aren’t provided, reviewed or endorsed by any advertiser or DansDeals.

Heynow

So if i get off in phili no miles?

Mendel

What about Delta DTW-TLV? Is there any chance for that?

Eitan

@Mendel: Doubt it. I don’t think they’d be able to fill planes from DTW.

cards

who has the newest planes ny /tlv route ?

waiting for a refund

anyone know how long it takes us airways to process a refund- my flight from phl to toronto was cancelled and i submitted a request 2 weeks ago

Ramsey

Dan, I believe your assessment of the AA to TLV situation is spot on. The former TWA employees got screwed by AA and it will be great to see AA pay up. As one of the 20,000 TWA employees here in the US that got screwed over, all I can say is Afh yenems tukhes is gut sepatchen. Your pal, Ramsey. Shalom Danny.

jake

Dan, is it possible that the Lakewood oilam’s impact on the PHL to TLV route (which is growing fast – I have gone to PHL twice in the last year and will be there soon for this route), can tip the scales in favor of US Air keeping this route?

Dan

@Heynow:
Read the related posts.

@Mendel:
No.

@cards:
United though Delta has refurbed their 747s

@waiting for a refund:
Airline refunds are notoriously slow.

@Ramsey:
Lol, shabbat shalom.

Definitely will be keeping my eye on this cse.

@jake:
You mean with $300 tickets 😀

It really boils down to whether PHL can survive as a hub with other 4 other east coast hubs (CLT, DCA, JFK, MIA). In my opinion PHL has the most to lose and once flights to PHL slow down it will make the PHL-TLV too hard to sustain due to lack of connecting passengers.
JFK and MIA are both better fits for American. US chose PHL as PHL was their best hub option as it was a better fit than CLT or PHX.

John

The PHL-TLV is subsidized by teva pharmaceuticals whos US HQ is outside Philly, US Airways makes money if that flight is empty or full.

I have a hard time seeing the PHL-TLV route going away.

Toby

Is there any cheap ticket in site for the end of February going from Israel to JFK.

Al

John,
Any proof to backup this notion that Teva is subsidizing an airline route? Sounds like a stretch.

YEHUDA

more probably be SFO for united to TLV spoke to the manager of United in Israel a few times about it

esti

Just wanted to thank you for an awesome trip to Israel on USairways last week with the glitch. The last leg of the trip to Toronto turned out to be absolutely amazing as our son got engaged to a girl from Toronto while we were on our way to Israel and we headed straight to Toronto on our way back for the vort. Amazing hashgacha pratis indeed.
On a separate note, I wanted to know the best way to bring my daughter from Israel in for the wedding around March 19th and returning right after Pesach. I have 60,000 Amex points and about 20,000 us airways miles. Any suggestions??? Thanks again.

Dave

Family of six from Toronto looking to go to israel for pesach. Any suggestions? Thanks!

yehuda R

Is there any cheap ticket in site for the month February going from JFK to TLV.?

soly

@dan price mistake on this amex site https://www.amextravel.com/flight_searches/15769810

wpDiscuz