El Al Frequent Flyer Stealth Program

No – El Al is not using stealth technology on their planes, but they are trying to use  stealth sneaky shady methods to steal poach the competition’s frequent flyer data. And they were not very shy about this disgraceful business tactic.  From the Jerusalem Post:

El Al reached out to the travel agent community last month, requesting hard information on the frequent fliers of several airlines.

Their request was simple: “Send us your list of frequent fliers on the following airlines: British Airways, Continental, Delta, Lufthansa and Turkish Air. Send us their ID number, mailing address, cell phone number, email address, and birth date. Send us their complete travel plans rom 2008, indicating to where they flew with dates and cities.”

Now to be fair to El Al, the airline made it a competition among the travel agent community. The agent who sent the most names could win big money – $1,000.

The story was picked up quickly by international frequent flyer community.  The general sentiment was that El Al was “Doing business the Israeli way”. And that link went out to 190,000 FlyerTalk subscribers. Just when our PR machine was recovering from an accused rapist President, a war that BBC did not find to their liking and a Prime Minister under investigation for more shady dealings than Spiro Agnew and Richard Nixon put together.

I guess the marketing guys forgot to ask the lawyers for their opinion beforehand (hey, at $300/hour can you blame them?) but the lawyers did put an end to this plan.

Hats off to:

1. The lawyers

2. The travel agents for not cooperating (they would have lost their licence)

3. Turkish Airlines (and others) for not making a shwarma out of ElAl’s management.

4. The Jerusalem Post for reporting this, and

5. You, for reading my blog and for using TripCart’s Road Trip Planner to pick up some New York City family vacation ideas for the summer.

Discount Orlando Disney Tickets from UK Website

Yes, you read that right – contributed by an avid reader who just bought 77 days of disney!

Getting discounts on Disney Orlando tickets are almost impossible. Prior to this post we knew of two ways – 1) Be a Florida resident and 2) Spend a day in a time share presentation (and a lifetime getting out of it). Now the third:

BUY TICKETS ON THEIR UK SITE WHEN THE EXCHANGE RATE IS FAVORABLE!

Example:

Seven Day park hopper adult ticket is $328 on their US site and 219 GBP on their UK site, which is equal to $306 at the pathetic rate of 1 GBP = $1.40 ( a few weeks ago). So, monitor Forex 24/7 and save yourself  some money in these recessionary times.  No need to monitor the Euro or the Canadian Dollar – they only sell tickets in dollars and pounds (maybe Yen, also).

Also note that not all types of passes are offered on both sites.

El AL Nonstop to Brazil, South America

ElAl just GRU! (GRU is code for Sao Paulo, Brasil)

Starting May 2, ElAl flies 3 time a week non-stop to Sao Paulo.

Through interline agreements, passengers can continue on to most main South American destinations. That means you have one ticket and your bags are checked all the way through. It is not a code share.

SCHEDULE – Flights leave Israel on Monday, Wednesday and Saturday evenings arriving early the following morning. Returning flights leave Brasil on Sunday, Tuesday and Thursday evening (715p) arriving in Israel the next day at 310p. (Schedule is similar to TLV-JFK-TLV).

COACH PRICE – $1000 to Rio and Sao Paulo, $1100 to most other destinations.

FREQUENT FLYER MILES -120,000 American Airline miles will get you an economy seat to Sao Paulo, Chile or Peru on ElAl.  ElAl Matmid members flying economy class earn between 65 and 250 points one way, depending on type of ticket.  That’s the same as flights to Los Angeles.

The flight is one of ElAl’s longest at 14.5 hours. The following will be the route in the New Middle East – but until Libya and Chad are willing to have us  in their airspace the routing is a bit longer, via Spain.

Finally – it is interesting that the flight is aimed at the religious pilgrim market originating in Brazil. Another notable entry in this field is Travelujah.