El Al CEO Gonen Usishkin announced today that he will step down by January with a goodbye letter that says it does not identify as a goodbye letter:
Of course this is no surprise.
Mr. Usishkin is a former IDF combat pilot, which appears to be the only criterion to becoming an El Al CEO.
Rather than come up with creative solutions to an age old problem, he famously said that refusing to sit next to someone would result in an immediate ejection from the plane. Apparently he wanted an El Al version of United’s Dr. Dao nightmare.
Mr. Usishkin also had to take back El Al’s claim that violent haredim delayed El Al Flight 2, which was diverted to Athens after the pilot tricked passengers to remain onboard. He also cancelled El Al’s settlement with affected passengers after news of the settlement was leaked to the media.
A month ago he saw the writing on the wall and filed a formal complaint against Eli Rozenberg, who became the majority shareholder after a public stock offering. He adopted a scorched-earth policy and asked the Israeli government to deny him the right to be the controlling shareholder of the airline.
At the time I called that move peak El Al. After all, for more than 6 months they took people’s money for tickets for flights they didn’t operate and refused to issue refunds. Now they took over $100MM from Eli Rozenberg and are trying to refuse transferring control of what was purchased.
In the end, Eli Rozenberg won permission to control the airline and unsurprisingly announced that the entire board would be replaced. I just hope he told Mr. Usishkin not to let the door hit him on the way out. 😀
Here’s hoping he can put together a world class El Al that we can all be proud of!
HT: hocker
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16 Comments On "In Surprise To Nobody, El Al’s CEO Will Step Down"
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Bravo! About time EL AL has some changes..
Now they can get rid of the movies on the plane and maybe put shiurim on
Good one.
amen!!
David, do you really want ElAl to fail again?
fail? or merit a huge olam haba
what a great idea instead of the old days when we would be forced to be subjected to prtizut and violence; the chilonim may merit to do teshuva through inspirational videos!!
Ok… and what about the significant percentage of non-Jews who fly ElAl. As their new “marketing advisor”, please tell me how you will capture a non-Jewish and highly secular Jewish market on these 10+ hour long flights? As a frum Jew myself, I know I’d prefer United in order to have cartoons for my young children.
All recent flights I’ve been on (probably not as many as most readers here, but a handful) have been bring-your-own-screen.
On international flights?
Don’t know when you flew them last, but they already offer shiurim…
TorahLive plus others
LOL!!! I am going to just keep coming back here for the comments
i hate to break to you all but there are non jews that fly el al and not everyone wants to study while on a plane – an intelligent comment would be to have shiurim and films – please dont preach – just be the best Jew that you can be
you son remember back in 2015 where you spoke out against those that sit next to woman on the plane? how come your changing your position?
Clearly you misunderstood my position.
I don’t like someone telling someone else they have to move. If you want to get and move, go ahead.
But I think El Al should have more creative solutions for the problem and I’ve expressed that to them many times.
all my flights to israel they asked the woman if she didnt mind moving they. never ever ever put pressure for a woman to move ever sometimes they offered 100 dollars or more to switch seats
is he leaving the company or just as his role as eco?