Delta’s Partnership With El Al Is Now Live, El Al Breaks Up With Alaska Airlines June 30th

by Gary Leff

Delta Air Lines and El Al announced a partnership in June. That partnership is now live and it means the end of El Al’s relationship with Alaska Airlines as Dan’s Deals was first to report.

  • Full codesharing relationship, and crediting El Al flights to Delta is probably better than crediting them to the Matmid Club for occasional flyers (though not nearly as good as crediting to Alaska was).

  • Elites receive reciprocal airport priority, extra baggage and seat selection.

  • Alaska Airlines earning and redemption ends June 30

It’s only been a year since you were first able to redeem Alaska Airlines miles for travel on El Al. Mileage Plan has been the best place to credit paid El Al flights as well. And El Al travel is set to become one of the sweet spots of the new Alaska Airlines distance-based award chart.

This is a huge downgrade for customers. El Al’s Matmid club is poor, and so is SkyMiles, so the two are better-matched. And from El Al’s perspective, Delta has a bigger customer base in New York, Miami and Los Angeles than Alaska does. So it’s access to more customers. But the value provided to members through the partnership is lower, because the value of SkyMiles both earning and redemption is so much lower.

About Gary Leff

Gary Leff is one of the foremost experts in the field of miles, points, and frequent business travel - a topic he has covered since 2002. Co-founder of frequent flyer community InsideFlyer.com, emcee of the Freddie Awards, and named one of the "World's Top Travel Experts" by Conde' Nast Traveler (2010-Present) Gary has been a guest on most major news media, profiled in several top print publications, and published broadly on the topic of consumer loyalty. More About Gary »

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Comments

  1. If Delta is involved, it just means they will jack up the prices.
    Delta will always find a way to screw the customers.

  2. Truly no loss for Alaska and its customers. El Al has the worst mannered employees in the world. I would pay many times more to fly in any other airline.

  4. Israeli tourism will take years to recover.
    El Al is basically retrenching back to NYC.
    A partnership is good for both of them since El Al will have a higher percentage of US-Israel capacity for years to come.

  6. Now that Hamas’ missiles have been neutralized and no longer a material threat to Tel Aviv, I’m wondering when UA, DL, and AA will start flying again. El Al’s flights are packed and fares are sky high.

  7. This is great for Delta, it means that they can now fly to Israel without flying to Israel.

    I’m a Delta Diamond and will enjoy this partnership.

Comments are closed.