Dear YWN, I am writing this letter on behalf of the thousands of you who have not yet done this. Recently, El Al was purchased by a member of the Frum community. Everyone was thrilled. But I have no idea what changes were made since this airline changed hands, but it’s utter insanity what is going on now, and I’ve personally had enough. For those of you unaware, every single day flight that is scheduled to land in Newark Airport is being changed to JFK Airport. This was done without any prior notice. People who have their cars parked in Newark are now over an hour away from their cars when they land. Thousands, upon thousands of Yeshiva Bochrim, seminary girls, and families coming back to the United States for Pesach – many of whom had their tickets booked and confirmed WEEKS ago – are suddenly having their airport destination changed. This is a major inconvenience to people from Lakewood, Baltimore, and even NYC. Making matters even WORSE is that El Al shut their call center when COVID hit, and they have not put it back into service yet. This means that no one can even call to see if their flight is on schedule, etc. Instead, they give you a WhatsApp option, which is a total failure. What major airline doesn’t have a call center?! When you send a WhatsApp to them, you get this automated response: נציג וירטואלי שירות לקוחות אל על Dear Customers, We are doing our best to provide a quick and efficient customer service, Unfortunately, due to high demand to fly ELAL, our WhatsApp service will be limited. You can reach our Customer Service at +972 39771111 Our Call center service is available Sunday-Thursday between 08:30-16:00, Friday between 08:00-13:00 and Saturday evening 19:00-23:00. We will continue to improve and do our best to provide the best service to our customers. Does anyone have a calculator? Can you figure out the times when someone from NY can possibly even attempt to reach this call center? Ill do the math for all of you. It’s 1:00AM to 9:00AM Eastern Time. I actually got up at 6:00am and called. And after being on hold for TWO HOURS, I hung up. I have spoken to nearly a dozen travel agents, and they are all frustrated and dumbfounded. They have no one to talk to and not receiving any answers. There are many other crazy stories. How about the family of 10 that had a flight to Israel leaving at around 11AM (booked MONTHS ago), and were suddenly told “sorry, the flight is cancelled”, and the family put on a different flight severely impacting their travel and Yom Tov plans. What’s adding salt to the wound, is the lack of basic courtesy which is standard in the airline industry. Normally, when an airline cancels a flight, any airline, the standard policy is the passenger is entitled to rebook on any flight of their choice as long as the same cabin is available. This is done with no price increase and fare is not a consideration. El Al is ignoring this basic courtesy, and bullying their customers to accept this airport change. Hundreds of cancelled Newark day flight passengers in both directions who request to be rebooked on the Newark night […]

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