Actually the El Al fare class is U, which doesn't appear to earn any AAdvantage miles.
-1.
LY points are worth nothing to me. I'm not going to start saving them up for another trip when the miles expire and they must be used on LY with a YQ.
+1000
ELAL's program is created with so much loophole's that it's impossible to count. just to mention a few:
1. YQ of about $350 NYC-TLV
2. most standard ticket that you buy from a travel agent or online earn 50% of the points or 0%, 50% - 100 matmid points which means you have to fly 7 RT's in 3 years to get anywhere, otherwise it's useless.
3. No good partnership, even though they claim on their site that you can redeem towards AA flights, no-one in their service center will do it for you. So, unless you live in NY or LAX, you'll have to pay cash for the connectors on a domestic flight to get into NY, vs. any other program that will add any domestic leg for free.
4. the only decent redemption is NY-TLV for 3000 matmid business, 1400 economy, where AA is quite expensive (135K business, 90K economy). Everywhere else in the world AA would be a lot cheaper. FE: HKG or BKK to TLV is 1500 in business one-way vs. 30K on AA business, 22.5 economy, and so the list can go on and on...
5. the expiration is non-sense. All other airlines I know go on activity, but on ELAL, every single mile will expire after 3 years, which means that a person can take 20 flights on 3 years, and still loose his miles, no matter how loyal he is.
To me it's a no brainer to accumulate matmid points when people have the option to credit those to AA, where you have such good redemption options.
