Delta Air Lines and Israeli flag carrier El Al are launching a strategic partnership.
- Delta to provide U.S. connections to El Al flights, including codesharing
- Reciprocal elite benefits
- And mileage earn-and-burn
All we’re going to see up front, though, is “customers connecting onto Delta or EL AL’s services will be able to check in for their entire journey,” with no timetable for additional integration.
The Delta SkyMiles and El Al Matmid programs are both poor, making them a good match.
To the extent that the partnership includes earning SkyMiles for travel on El Al between the U.S. and Israel, that would be a benefit for those buying El Al tickets.
In theory it would be useful to redeem SkyMiles for El Al travel, however Delta partner award pricing is now absurd.
A U.S. partner is helpful to El Al, however, in earning connecting business for its flights rather than just origin and destination traffic from cities with heavy travel to and from Israel. The U.S. market is important for El Al, and finally having a partner here after 9 years is significant for them.
El Al partnered with American until November 2014. American ended this relationship after being taken over by US Airways. US Airways flew Philadephia – Tel Aviv, and it was expected that the airline would grow its service to Israel on its own and so would be more of an El Al competitor. Initially that didn’t happen – with American pulling out of the Israel market. They’ve returned, though they’ve already scaled back their ambitions.
Perhaps this new deal will put to bed persistent, unfounded criticisms of Delta being anti-semitic? In 2018 Delta was sued by a group of employees for anti-semitic discrimination, while in 2011 Delta was accused of anti-semitism for its partnership with Saudi Arabian’s national airline.
I wrote at the time that Delta doesn’t hate Jews. However they clearly lied in response to the incident claiming “Delta does not intend to codeshare or share reciprocal benefits, such as frequent flier benefits, with Saudi Arabian Airlines” when of course they were about to do just that as Saudia entered the SkyTeam alliance.
This isn’t a partnership that I expected but it will add depth to Delta’s partnership list and will increase options for Delta passengers. Given that United has long been the largest of the 3 US carriers to Israel, this move will help level the playing field.
The chances are high they will start at a more basic level of partnership and build from there if things look promising.
El Al and AA’s relationship continued after 2014, at least in a limited way..
There were codeshares in affect after that, I know I earned AA miles and elite qualification flying AA-coded El Al flights between LHR and TLV in 2016.
A good (poor valued!) match indeed:)
P.S – @Gary, I really wish you hadn’t looped in the middle of your post re: anti-semitism….
It just feeds the few trolls here from the extreme right and radical left who are indeed anti-semites.
Obviously, Delta isn’t anti-semitic as a company. They just suck at providing value for frequent flyers (of all backgrounds:))
I have to imagine this is more about El Al getting access to domestic U.S. connections than Delta getting access to Israel. The only benefit for Delta customers is the ability to connect to El Al for Dubai and a few random places that Delta doesn’t serve. Delta is very weak in the Middle East and Indian subcontinent. Maybe El Al will be expanding.
@ Gary — I guess Delta wanted to get in on a piece of the Medicare action.
Not noted in the article but El Al is also an Alaska Airlines Mileage Plan partner and they have award redemption using AS Miles. Perhaps that will end now with Delta saddling up as they are enemies.
Hmmm… So, I bought El Al tickets recently and our connecting flights are on AA and JetBlue to get to the El Al flight. Does this arrangement change that type of arrangement? It will be interesting to see.
I think Matmid is even worse than Skymiles. In 2010 I dIid an amex points transfer to fly El AL 1-way and I think it ended up being 240k amex + 2000 in cash.
Why would I do this?
I wanted to make aliyah in first class, ofc !!
The Jewish Agency rep that met me at the plane said I was the first aliyah she remembered in first class. Actually Im not sure it wasn’t biz class!