El Al and Delta Launch Strategic Partnership; May Join SkyTeam
El Al and Delta announced they will launch a codeshare and mileage partnership. That will include the ability to book connecting flights and have bags checked through to the final destination with Delta and El Al • Full Story
“Written by Daniel Eleff, DansDeals.com
El Al and Delta announced they will launch a codeshare and mileage partnership.
That will include the ability to book connecting flights and have bags checked through to the final destination with Delta and El Al.
You will be able to earn and redeem Delta miles for El Al flights and El Al points for Delta flights. Unfortunately neither carrier is known for generous redemptions, so this is a worst case scenario for US partnerships as both American and United offer far more affordable partner redemption rates than Delta.
El Al’s partnerships will span across airlines from all 3 major airline alliances, including OneWorld’s Alaska and Qantas, Skyteam’s Delta, and Star Alliance’s ANA.
Frankly, I’m surprised that this happened with Delta over American. Delta has been rapidly growing in the Israeli market and is a strong competitor to El Al. They both offer service to Boston and JFK, though Delta also offers Atlanta service. Delta mentions being able to take advantage of connections to Atlanta, Boston, and JFK, though it’s always easier to stay on one airline for the entire journey when possible. The Atlanta flight has been very successful, but I’m not sure how Delta’s Atlanta connectivity is relevant here at all?
El Al also offers service to Miami and Newark, but Delta offers little connectivity there. El Al’s Los Angeles flight will gain some US connectivity thanks to Delta though.
On the other hand American has been weak in the Israeli market and had to cut back on their Miami-Tel Aviv flights. I figured that rejoining American would make sense as El Al would have access to connecting passengers in Boston, Los Angeles, and Miami. That would have also likely meant joining the OneWorld alliance, which is far stronger than SkyTeam. Alas, that seems impossible now and joining SkyTeam seems like it will be the path forward for El Al.
But Delta runs a very good operation and has many loyalists. My only question is how many of those people are looking to connect from a Delta flight to an El Al flight?
I’ve long said that El Al should enable secure connections in Tel Aviv and maybe that will be part of the play here?
El Al confirms via a financial filing in Hebrew that Delta has committed to “make reasonable efforts to assist the company” in joining SkyTeam
Additionally, “The parties agreed to commit to the agreement for a period not less than five years from the date of implementation of the code sharing agreement or the club sharing agreement, whichever is later, after which each party will have the option of terminating with a 6-month advance notice (for any reason).
The agreement establishes common principles that will apply to the relationship between the airlines in the commercial arrangements, as well as limitations on the company from being associated with similar arrangements with airlines based in the United States, all in accordance with the terms and deadlines that were agreed upon.“
That sounds like agreements with Alaska and JetBlue may end when legally possible.
What do you think of this new partnership?
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