In June 2023, Delta Air Lines and EL AL Israel Airlines signed an agreement to launch a strategic partnership. The main part of this cooperation will be launching shortly, with the introduction of a codeshare agreement and reciprocal perks.
Continue reading: Delta & EL AL Launch Strategic Partnership
Share your questions, experiences, and thoughts below.
USA/Israel have had open-skies for well over a decade, so a j/v is possible.
Timing seems pretty unfortunate though, but as you said, that may work to DL's advantage, since LY is going to fly anyway.
Simple Flying put up a post yesterday saying that UA was resuming TLV flights on January 9th but the post has since been taken down. However, with the LH group restarting early January, would DL really wait as long as spring (assume March at the earliest) to resume flights to Israel?
Simple Flying is almost always inaccurate, but regardless, flights to TLV resuming feels highly unlikely unless there is a prolonged cease-fire. The DL/LY partnership pretty much ensures DL will not return to flying BOS-TLV, which was a flop, and most likely, LY will increase the frequency.
Very good for both Delta and El Al. Flights from JFK, Boston and LAX will all benefit from this.
Lots of customers to fly from Florida up to the Boston hub and then on to Tel Aviv and vice versa
EL AL would be better served in retaining a broad net of code share partners as opposed to joining an Alliance, especially SKYTEAM. No mention of EL AL and AA who have been partners for years but in all truth, AA nor ONEWORLD have a need for EL AL because they already have Qatar and Royal Jordanian to serve the Alliance and OMAN is scheduled to join in 2024. Also, with EL AL not operating on the Sabbath the value to an Alliance is limited.
Israel has always been the largest Middle East market from the US despite all of the fawning over the AA/QR and UA/EK partnerships.
While doing something w/ EY is always still possible, there is more strategic value to locking up a historically large local market with DL than to chase the Arab Middle East airlines whose route systems heavily duplicate what all of the US 3 offer via their European JVs.
It will take years for US-Israel tourism to recover even when the fighting stops which could be soon. Israeli tourism books months in advance and people have scratched Israel off of the list for 2024 which makes the El Al partnership even stronger.
It was possible to connect at TLV to other destinations from the US but most of those beyond TLV flights have been reduced. Security at TLV has always been tight and that will be even more true now.
El Al gains far more at its US gateways via DL than with any other airline.
DL, like UA, will restart NYC-TLV as soon as they can but most of the planes that flew non-NYC to Israel routes have been reallocated to other routes for summer 2024, just as was true w/ China.
It’s true that will take Israel tourism a long time to recover but many Jews and people who have a family there will visit in large numbers. Even now the flights on LY are full.
precisely... but that travel skews disproportionately to/from NYC where DL and UA both operate large enough hubs that they can connect passengers. El Al serves the largest non-NYC markets in the US for DL to get some of the benefit of that travel although only a JV would allow them to capture the full revenue they sell. DL does have to add more flights somewhere on its global network in order to offset more JVs even if they decide to move forward w/ an EL Al JV but I expect they will do both.
My parents are in Israel now visiting friends and family. The flights are full, as are the hotels. There is somewhat of a wartime travel industry in Israel at the moment.
Even if leisure traffic takes a while to recover (which I don't think it will as people have short memories) there will still be a lot of demand from people visiting friends and family as well as businesses travelers.
Ha. When the vast majority of air traffic is cancelled, it would hardly be a surprise to see the remaining flights be full...
@grey for sure except we aren't talking about one flight five times a week being full. El Al is still operating it's full schedule to the USA (maybe even more) which includes at least 5-6 daily flights from the New York area. So that's still a massive number of daily seats getting filled.
Seems you have more of an aversion to SkyTeam and affinity for OneWorld, than any applicable argument as to why El Al is better off staying outside of an alliance.
Quite a moot point about Latam and SkyTeam - Ben , don’t you know that QR has way bigger stake in Latam than Delta ?
Going by this link DL very slightly has more than QR:
https://www.latamairlinesgroup.net/ownership-structure
Yes Israel is the largest Middle East market, but EK and QR are all about connecting traffic. Connections are particularly important for India now given the Russian airspace restrictions on nonstop US-India flights.
Delta had a partnership with jet airways until they went bankrupt, as far as I know there was no capital investment involved.
Regarding skyteam, I would guess it’s more el Al who wants to join and so the partnership with delta enables that.
Btw, Etihad also started a close relationship with el Al since the Abraham accords and they’re now starting a partnership with AF/KL, I wonder if they’ll also want to join skyteam
Ben, please cover Norse Atlantic’s inaugural flights from Miami to Paris and Berlin. It’s in the news.
I don’t think Israelis will have “short memories” of what happened to them on October 7th.
I think you should consider the more general alliance partnership map as to in the Middle East which alliances the airlines are partnered with or part of. I think it is mostly OneWorld or independent airlines. Delta wants Skyteam to get into the Middle East and there apparently is a strategy for this.
Smart bloggers (I am taking no credit here) have already checked and identified massive price differences for the exact same flights between the El Al website and Delta's.
Delta has been significantly cheaper than El Al for all checked flights.
Hey Tim,
Certainly Israel has the largest O/D market, that is factual. And the networks are hugely mutually beneficial ex-US.
But the European JVs don’t offer the vast connectivity of the ME2 (EK needs to prove itself all over before I’ll reference it as the ME3), so I don’t agree with that point.
All the best, Leigh
@flyerdon I was obviously referring to tourists when I made the comment about short memories.
October 7th will be a traumatic day for Israelis and Jews alike for many many years to come
Delta and El Al do not have antitrust immunity so cannot price jointly. They will likely adjust their pricing; El Al will not want Delta undercutting them but it takes time to get the inventory and pricing adjusted. Delta has seen no demand for its flights to TLV for months.
Although I never would have predicted this, it does make sense to me now that it has been announced.
El Al is and always has been the preferred airline for Israelis visiting the USA and Jewish Americans visiting Israel. There’s a sense of ethnic pride in flying with them, and as mentioned before, the flights are still full despite the current war. While it’s true that non-Jewish Americans might not be planning to visit Israel anytime soon, Jewish Americans, especially those with relatives in Israel, will not be deterred.
Delta gains the connecting passengers onto its US domestic flights as well as Canada and other destinations in the Americas. El Al gains a wider selection of flights for its connecting passengers through its US gateways (DL has a greater presence at JFK, BOS and LAX than others).