EL AL Israel Airlines

We flew from Newark, NJ to Tel Aviv, Israel. Going flight was ok. It was interesting to watch information on the overhead monitor as well as seat monitor. Return seat from Israel to Newark, NJ was one of most miserable rides I’ve ever had! I was in the middle of 3 seats on 11 hour flight, unable to get the seat to recline, overhead light did not work, not able to watch anything on monitor. Had to climb over or ask other person to move in order to get out of my seat. The person by the window kept the window closed, adding to boredom. Being cramped in middle, upright seat for the long ride left my body in pain at the end of the flight. The plane appeared to be an old raggedy plane. The miserable plane ride home over shadowed the exciting experience of touring the Holy Land. I just feel that I paid too much money to have endured such a miserable ride.
Anna Daily

Since appr. 10 years I fly from Amsterdam to Ben Gurion twice or more a year. In the beginning I tried cheaper airline, alas not to my satisfaction: no direct flight, hardly comfortable hours, etc. After 2 years I started to fly ElAl on the mentioned regular basis. For those 4 or 4 1/2 hours the seats are good (although I always pay extra for an exit row) the service is good, the food enough an d tasty, personnel kind and hospitable, and I always feel safe with ElAl either in the plane or form the moment I check in in the airport. Yes, there are older planes, yes the entertainment system is somewhat outdated, yeas, the seats could be more comfortable, but one should not nag for those few hours and the very reasonable price. Especially compared to the pirate airlines lik @#$^, (%&^* and @($&%- etc. Safety first and (comparatively)comfortably, and good service.

The worst customer service I have ever experienced I have been trying to contact the airline about changing the date for my upcoming ticket and have called them every day for a week and not once did a representative pick up the phone, in my opinion that is unacceptable

El Al has gotten into the habit of selling you El Al tickets and having two cheap charter airlines from Portugal and Spain actually fly you. This clearly saves them money, but you get to fly on old planes with uncomfortable seats, no entertainment system, etc. Better yet, they rearrange the flights to be covered by the charter airlines at the last moment, and since the charter planes are smaller, they will happily bump you or reschedule you on the day of the flight for their convenience—in my case, a flight postponed by 6 hours and changed to arrive at a different airport (I guess they think Newark and JFK are really the same thing) without any reason—perfect weather, no plane malfunctions mentioned (or any other discussion of what had happened beyond the breezy “apologize for the inconvenience” once). Yes, I did lose a connection, and no, they did not care.

Customer service is non-existent. I had to wait 2 hours on the line to talk to a person in Israel, and then got a friendly young man who could not tell me anything about why this happened to my flight nor do anything to help me.

In my opinion, ELAL is one of the worst airlines in the world.
It is an arrogant company with very bad service attitude. In my last 2 flight, with ELAL, I have experienced unexpected delays.
I would prefer to fly even with 2 connecting flights and not fly directly with ELAL.
We had a very bad experiance with ELAL due to a delay that caused us to loose our connecting flight.
On flights from TLV to BKK ELAL is still using an old 747-400 plane, amazing to see this plane is still in service (seat handles ashtrays openings, still existing).