EL AL Adding Flights To San Francisco This Year

Great - hoping O'Hare is next up. Annoying to have to hop to the East Coast to get a Tel Aviv flight, no reason why there shouldn't be a direct Chicago - TLV connection.

I wonder why you write EL AL in all caps. It's not an acronym--it's Hebrew for "to the skies". They style themselves in all caps in their logo, but so, for example, do Delta and United, and you don't write them in all caps.

The United flight is daily nowadays

Having the name in all caps clears up any potential confusion of: El Al for instance with first letter captalised while remaining lower.
Are we talking about EL AL here or ei ai

UA's SFO-TLV has already been such a stellar performer since inception. This uber-early non-announcement by El Al just gave UA carte blanche to upgauge SFO-TLV to 777-300ER.

United operates DAILY flights to TLV using 787.
They started with 3 weekly but moved quickly to daily flights.

@ Rich -- I'm simply using their own branding. Doing a Google search for EL AL, here's how they choose to have their name displayed:
"Israel Flights - Flights from USA to Israel | EL AL Airlines"

So I share your confusion, but I also never understood why airberlin didn't capitalize their name, etc. 😉

@ A mirrer @ Daniel -- Didn't realize it's daily nowadays, whoops. Post updated. Thanks.

I hope your tongue and cheek AS as a new partner comes true for us AS it's better than have BA as the only way to Israel.

As for giving UA time to ramp up their service really? EL AL has nothing to worry about when it comes to UA.

Interesting- not much of a Jewish population in the Bay Area, as compared to Los Angeles. But there is a lot of tech business that might drive enough demand.

@Henry LAX - I know you love to defend United at every turn, but it's not like they have oodles of spare 773s sitting around. LOL.

Plus, they're be smart enough to upgauge it if the loads dictate.

@DCJoe

Definitely the tech sector demand.

@ DCJoe the Bay Area is a huge Israeli hub and a very popular tourist destination for Israelis. United's flights are full and really hard to find an award seat.

Would SJC perhaps make more sense than SFO?

Doesn't make much sense. Ord is the more logical.

United has had a home run with their SFO-TLV flight. Loads are much higher than other European destinations and they have significant feed from LA. I was on an SFO-TLV flight last year and the two people next to me were from LA. So I see this as El Al defending their LA nonstop flight and also targeting the tech business in the Bay Area. However given how bad Matmid is both in terms of earning and redeeming I suspect frequent flyers will stick with United.

United enjoys a hefty premium on their non-stop service to TLV from SFO. It consistently prices several hundred dollars over connecting options in Coach and can be thousands more expensive in Business class. Interestingly, basing an itinerary ex-SFO vs ex-LAX (arguably a similar market) can also increase the price substantially, especially for premium cabins. I think EL AL wants to get in on this premium market - given the high volume of business traffic between the two high tech hubs. I can't imagine UA gets a huge amount of connecting feed on this flight, except some smaller western cities, given that the eastern two thirds of the country could easily connect to its flight from EWR.

I wonder if DC is next as interest has been expressed by EL AL to start service by the end of 2018. It would hurt the Turkish flight because that is by far their number one connecting destination from Dulles.

My previous experience with availability on the UA SFO-TLV nonstops has been empty seat maps and Z9 P0 months out, all days, all West Coast connecting cities. That is a sign that they are expecting profitable flights.

Any word on the layout seat pitch of their 787-9? Will they make it 2-4-2 as Boeing intended and JAL has kept?

LY still does 9 abreast seating (3-3-3) on their 777's whereas Untied does 10 (3-4-3). I know so many people want their Mileage Plus miles and status.

I found the answer - 9 abreast on the 787's. Ugh.

DCJoe

Because only Jewish people want to fly to Israel?

Also, el al has super tight security, so I feel safer on them than anyone

EL AL has an inherent schedule disadvantage for long-distance business travel because they don't fly on the Sabbath. For the US West Coast it means flights must leave Thursday afternoon in order to land in Tel Aviv before sundown on Friday (14:30 hour flight + 10 hour time difference). This is why the TLV--LAX "daily" summer schedule is only 5 days a week. In New York and Newark they squeeze in a 6th weekly frequency by flying westbound on Friday morning, leaving the plane in the US over the Sabbath, and flying back to Tel Aviv late Saturday night; but from the West Coast this would mean an arrival time of close to midnight in Tel Aviv, so they stick with 5 weekly.

So the business traveler is at a schedule disadvantage, but EL AL has a very loyal following by many Israelis, Israeli expats, and supporters of Israel. Los Angeles is the second largest U.S. market for these groups (after New York), which is why historically it has been able to hold its EL AL flights when cities like Chicago, Boston and Miami dropped theirs in the 1990s and 2000s. My guess is that the 787 makes these markets viable again, and also opens up the Bay Area, which has similar demographic characteristics (though smaller than L.A.).

So United is starting 77W flights from SFO-TLV from May 23rd, 2018. Ahead of LY starting service. This way they have all aisle access and a whole lot more capacity.