Surprised El AL passengers on Flight 001 to NY, scrambled Tuesday morning to get to the airport on time.
El Al initially delayed their flight from 12:45 AM to 11:00 AM later in the morning, sending SMS alerts and automated phone calls to passengers after pilots called a wildcat strike delaying up to 5 flights on the NY and Hong Kong lines.
But after passengers went to sleep thinking their flight would be at 11:00 AM, El Al sent out a new SMS at around 10:30 PM, notifying passengers that the flight’s time has been changed again, and has now has been moved up to 9:00 AM.
Passengers who woke up in the morning and saw the new SMS for the first time had to scramble to reach the airport in time.
One passenger told JewishPress.com, “I happened to glance at my phone in the morning and saw the message. I grabbed everything and rushed to the airport. I almost missed my flight. How could El Al act so irresponsibly?”
El Al check-in clerks nodded in reaction to passenger complaints about the multiple surprise time changes, but didn’t respond with any comments.
A few months ago, El AL suddenly and unexpectedly cancelled its points sharing arrangement with the American HAS credit card company, leaving angry HAS card holders with tens of thousands of accumulated points that could no longer be directly converted towards El Al flights.