Exclusive: Alon Lavi From ELAL Answers Your Questions
Meaningful People
Meaningful Minute
4.8 • 2K Ratings
🗓️ 12 March 2026
⏱️ 20 minutes
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Summary
El Al has been getting a lot of heat lately. Canceled flights, no callbacks, passengers feeling abandoned. Our community sent in hundreds of questions and I sat down with Alon Lavi, El Al's head of customer experience, to get real answers.
He's answering from a bomb shelter. That tells you everything about what they're dealing with.
We cover why flights are leaving half empty, how they're deciding who gets rebooked, the pricing controversy, and what they're doing to fix their customer service.
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Okay, thank you so much, Alon Lavi, for joining me. |
| 0:03.6 | It does look like you're underground right now, and I hope, you know, the service is okay there, |
| 0:08.9 | but I imagine that's where you are because of the circumstances that you guys are experiencing. |
| 0:13.8 | Yes, correct. |
| 0:14.9 | Since February 28th, we moved the from to this bomb shelter |
| 0:22.6 | this bunker as we call it |
| 0:24.3 | and we operate |
| 0:26.4 | from this bomb shelter |
| 0:28.7 | 24 hours a day |
| 0:30.7 | in order to |
| 0:32.8 | have operations |
| 0:34.8 | continuity and |
| 0:36.8 | yeah we are here. 24-7. |
| 0:41.1 | I guess for starters, if you could just give insight into what's been going on, people |
| 0:45.1 | are obviously having their flights canceled and they're not being re-booked. |
| 0:49.5 | And many are seeing other smaller airlines that are flying out with even more than 100 passengers. |
| 0:57.0 | Can you give some insight into exactly what is happening? |
| 1:00.0 | Yeah, well, just for the timeline, okay, since February 28th, what we did, first of all, |
| 1:08.0 | is flying all the airplanes outside of Bangoran airport, |
| 1:11.9 | just to keep those airplanes safe and ready for the day that we needed. |
| 1:20.1 | It took some days until the Israeli government, meaning aviation authority and security authorities, |
| 1:32.8 | allow us to start operations very gradually to Banguja. |
... |
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