In the past week, the controversial El Al Israel Airlines Ltd. (TASE: ELAL) pilot strike has wreaked havoc on the flight schedule of Israel's largest, "national", airline. This strike has affected thousands of passengers, whose flights have been delayed and postponed. El Al is nowadays facing a complicated consumer crisis. Once, Israelis had considered flying with El Al almost to be almost an act of Zionism, and had been willing to forgive small service glitches or delays; nowadays, El Al can hardly be said to make local customers feel "most at home in the world."
This disenchantment has made Israelis search for cheaper, more reliable, alternatives offered by other airlines, which have significantly expanded their local operations since the open skies policy has come into effect. At the same time, foreign carriers have also been courting Israeli passengers in a battle for their hearts and pockets. One of their methods has been to join forces with entities with a significant consumer power in the Israeli market, such as credit card companies, worker committees, consumers' clubs, and offer perks that have been giving El Al a real fight.
The Hot consumer's club, the largest consumer's club in Israel, which has about 150,000 households as its members, has recently launched exactly such a campaign. About one year ago, Hot and the tourist company Pegasus Tours and Travel, launched the 'fly and save' campaign, which provides a 4% discount during payment on the order of tickets for regular flights of foreign carriers operating at Ben Gurion Airport. Moreover, club members will now be able to enjoy a 5% discount and choose from a larger variety of foreign carriers, including British Airways, Turkish Airlines (the carrier with the second highest number of passengers, after El Al), Iberia, Aeroflot and Royal Jordanian; KLM, Air Berlin, Air France and Uzbekistan Airlines have also recently joined this campaign.
Since Hot and Pegasus started offering this discount, almost 5,000 flight tickets have been sold to club members via the website. Hot Consumers Club was founded in 1996 by the National Union of Technicians and Practical Engineers and had gradually incorporated members of the Union of Academics in Social Sciences and Humanities, the Histadrut's Federation of Engineers, Architects and Graduates of the Technological Sciences in Israel, Israel Association of Social Workers and the Israeli Press Association. Overall, about 250,000 people are able to enjoy this discount.
A real discount on all flight components
While El Al also offers a 5% discount to Hever Consumers Club members, the discount does not encompass all flight components, since it does include taxes and levies. In contrast, the discount offered by Hot and foreign airlines does comprise all flights components: fuel, port charges and various levies.
Hot Consumers Club chairman Yuri Mark said, "The goal of our club is to decrease the cost of living for our hundreds of thousands of members, in all fields of consumption. About a year after the campaign was launched, further carriers have been added to it in order to cover as many destinations as possible and now, the discount on tickets provided to our members has also increased. It is important to note that this is a discount in real terms and is provided during payment on the ticket price, including taxes and levies. After negotiations with the carriers operating in Israel, we have managed to launch a wide-scale venue which actually makes flights cheaper for club members."
The current reality has proven again and again, in various fields, that smart consumerism overcomes blind loyalty. Until El Al pilots and the company's management reach an understanding on the pilots' salaries and working conditions, it seems that many Israelis, interested in flying overseas at cheap prices, with good conditions and a reliable company, will continue flocking to foreign carriers.
Published by Globes [online], Israel business news - www.globes-online.com - on November 27, 2016
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