39 reviews
Welcome to my new Flight Report series, In which I'll cover my flights from Israel to the US and back.
For years I'm dreaming of traveling to the US and experience what America is like and finally I got the chance to go on a 50 days solo adventure, mostly in the southwest with several days in Chicago and two short hops to Mexico.
The flight routing doesn't make much such sense as many things have changed since I booked this trip from Lufthansa (except for the domestic flights) in December 2023.
This time I finally got the chance to fly long-haul for the first time in my life, and to fly on wide-body aircraft for the first time since 2011.
On this report I'll cover my first flight out of the seven, which is an EL AL flight from Tel Aviv to Frankfurt onboard their Boeing 737-800.
While I was originally supposed to fly this sector with Lufthansa, they canceled the flight so I contacted Lufthansa and they agreed so book me to the EL AL flight (the other option was with Austrian via Vienna which had much better flight times but I found it a bit boring).
Now let's get started!
I woke up around 2:15am, I still couldn't believe I'm doing this journey.
I got a ride to the airport with my family and entered Terminal 3, which is the main international terminal, however back then it was the only terminal for all flights as Terminal 1 was closed due to the light passenger capacity back then.
Terminal 3 arrival hall:
I went up to the departure floor and I entered the line for EL AL's check in.
Automatic kiosks for baggage tagging are also available but this time I preferred not to use those.
As you can see it wasn't empty but it went quite fast, I believe the whole process including security questioning took less than 15 minutes.
At the check in desk I was told that if I want to leave the airport during my 7:30 hours layover in Frankfurt I'll have to pick my baggage in Frankfurt, keep it and check in for the second flight there, unlike What I thought before so I decided to check in only for the flight to Frankfurt for now.
Security and passport control were a breeze as usual in TLV, I'm really glad that my home airport had become so efficient in recent years.
The famous walkway between the passport control area and the Duty Free area:
From there you can get some views over the E concourse.
EL AL Boeing 737-900ER to Amsterdam:
The Duty Free area:
FIDS (mostly EL AL 737s as you can see):
D concourse (which was used mostly by EL AL) is closed now as the jetbridges are being replaced:
EL AL Boeing 737-800 to Zurich:
I got a cappuccino for 8 NIS (2.1$), amazing price for an airport:
After walking around in all of the concourses (and spotting only EL AL 737s and nothing else unfortunately) I finally went to my gate C3 as many passengers were already lining up for boarding:
Boarding started on time:
Today's aircraft is EL AL Boeing 737-800 registered 4X-EKK.
It was was delivered new to Jet Airways in 2014, stored in 2019, transferred to EL AL in 2020 and stored again until 2023 when it entered it's service with them.
Business class:
Economy class:
My seat was 34A which is the first row of emergency exit seats, you can assign in it for free.
That means extra legroom but limited recline, personally I would rather have normal legroom with standard recline instead.
Besides that that seats are comfortable all in all and come with adjustable headrests, USB-A and USB-C ports, a phone holder and a standard tray table.
Seat overview:
Seat pocket contents included safety card, duty free catalog and inflight magazine which had useful information about EL AL's fleet and destinations and as well as many articles and ads:
EL AL Boeing 737-800 to Paris was parking in the gate next to us:
Afterwards flight announcements were made by the crew by the purser and the captain (actually this flight had 2 captains and a first officer, I wonder why, if someone have a guess please let me know in the comments) in Hebrew and English and a recorded announcement in German was played.
Shortly later the safety video was played on the overhead screens as we started pushback:
Takeoff was made at 6:22am (22 minutes late) through runway 26 (4062m) which is the most common option to takeoff from TLV:
The entertainment on this flight includes overheads screens with inflight map (which sometimes changed to ads or relaxation videos) and a streaming service that has a nice variety of content such as movies, TV shows and music but unfortunately it doesn't work very well.
Cabin view:
The service for this included a bottle of water and then a hot "Pretzel sandwich with Mozzarella Cheese" as it was written on the package and it also had dried tomato paste.
It was nice but I would've appreciate a proper meal service, and more importantly a full beverage service.
The rest of the flight was quiet and uneventful, the flight attendants (especially the one was that served my row) were very kind and professional.
The weather was cloudy and I could barely see anything except for when we flew over the Austrian Alps and then I could spot the snowy peaks which were beautiful:
Shortly before arrival we were served a small coconut snack with cocoa which is a nice gesture and a growing trend for airlines to serve a pre-arrival snack.
After about four hours in the air we started our descent to Frankfurt, flying over several towns in Frankfurt metropolitan area:
Landing was made at 9:33am (12 minutes behind schedule) through runway 07R (4000m), and it was quite a hard landing, and we started our taxi to our gate.
Air Canada Boeing 787-9 to Toronto:
Singapore Airlines Boeing 777-300ER to Singapore (from New York):
Air Canada Airbus A330-300 to Montreal:
We parked at gate C6 which is the usual gate for EL AL in Frankfurt and next to us parked this Lufthansa A321-100 to Sofia:
We got out of the aircraft via a jetbridge to the old and grey Terminal 1 that serves Lufthansa Group, Condor, Star Alliance members and some additional airlines such as EL AL:
Passport control went quick as not many passengers arrived at concourse C at that time.
Then I proceeded to the baggage claim hall when it started to get really bad, to my surprise that what I saw there:
Meanwhile I went to the lavatories which had a disgusting and sticky floor.
The baggage arrived after not less than about 80 minutes!
But that's not the end as I had to locate the baggage storage, which also took me a decent amount of time as the signs were wrong and not updated, and then the same for finding the train to the city which took me a while.
And I didn't even mentioned that I had to pay double for the baggage storage even though it wasn't overweight, and that a day pass for the train (S-Bahn) costs not less than 12.30 Euros!
However despite everything I somehow made it to the city center to pass a few hours before my next flight.
The main hall of Terminal 1:
After not flying with EL AL since 2011 I didn't really know what to expect, but I was pleasantly surprised and I had a very nice flight.
The crew were great, the cabin is much better than any of their European competitors and it has a decent variety of features.
However the two major drawbacks were the meal and beverage service which wasn't bad it could definitely improve a lot, and the streaming service that barely work for most of the flight and has to be fixed, all in all, I would surely with EL AL in the future if the price won't be too expensive.
Ben Gurion Airport was great as usual, super efficient, clean and pleasant.
Frankfurt airport, however, is a very different story and it has to improve immediately, as it's not what a world class hub airport should look like, it's old, dark, inefficient and confusing. I hope that Terminal 3 will make FRA a great airport as it should be.
Les contributeurs de Flight-Report ont posté 5 avis concernant 2 compagnies sur la ligne Tel Aviv (TLV) → Frankfurt (FRA).
La compagnie qui obtient la meilleure moyenne est El Al Israel Airlines avec 8.1/10.
La durée moyenne des vols est de 4 heures et 38 minutes.
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2 Comments
Thanks for sharing!
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