Why Can’t Qantas Book El Al Business Class Award Tickets Between The US And Israel?

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Qantas has the most favorable partner award chart for travel on El Al. From NYC to Tel Aviv you need 37.8K miles in coach, 70.8K miles in premium economy, or 90K miles in business class.

Unfortunately, since late last year, it hasn’t been possible to book business class travel between the US and Tel Aviv using Qantas points.

In the good news department, availability in coach and premium economy using Qantas points was greatly improved, to match the space on other partners. But what happened to business class?

For example, on November 10th, there are 2 saver business partner seats from JFK and from Newark to Tel Aviv.

Etihad can’t book these online, but if you call, they can book them for 120K miles.

Virgin Atlantic can book it online for 150K points:

Air France can book it online for 152K points:

Delta can book it online for 290K points:

But business class is conspicuously missing with Qantas points:

While many airlines block some or even all saver award space in some cabins from partner airlines, I can’t recall another case of an airline only blocking space from a single partner.

I set out to learn more last December.

I couldn’t get a straight answer from El Al, so I reached out to Qantas’ media team asking if they were blocking El Al business class space, or if the space wasn’t being provided to them by El Al.

They weren’t aware of any changes, but I sent over the evidence and asked for an explanation.

Blocking some partner awards wouldn’t be unprecedented. Before United merged with Continental, they used to block awards from some partners via a practice called Starnet blocking. That helped the airline conserve cash that they would have to pay out to partner airlines for award flights when there was an imbalance in how many people redeemed awards between the airline’s mileage programs.

The response from Qantas asked if I toggled the economy cabin to all cabins (I had, but what a silly website design for that to be required to see higher classes). The reply was then that there was business class space between Europe and Israel that was bookable with Qantas points.

Yes, but what about US awards in business class?

I gave several more sample business class dates that were bookable with other partners, but not Qantas, and they promised to dig deeper.

Qantas responded in January that they weren’t blocking seats, but that there was a lot of demand on El Al seats due to the war.

I pushed back once again, and got a response that Qantas hadn’t changed any policies, so this was being escalated to the head of the loyalty team.

After several more back and forth emails, Qantas recently gave me a call to fill me in, as they concluded their research.

In short, the inquiry set off a long chain of emails internally, which confirmed that Qantas isn’t blocking any award space and that it simply wasn’t being provided from El Al to them.

As far as why Qantas would be different than El Al’s other partners, they speculated that perhaps they were a smaller and more out-of-the-way partner, and El Al didn’t expect them to have US passengers redeeming their points for that kind of travel.

However, Qantas said they are having conversations with El Al about expanding their access so that it could be comparable to what’s offered to El Al’s other partner airlines.

Qantas was unable to provide an official statement, and suggested that I circle back with El Al. I did that and was told by El Al that,

“As a publicly traded company, we do not disclose commercial information. EL AL has a generous award availability to both its own members and partners’ members, and it may vary based on several parameters.”

Not much of an answer, but there you have it. For unknown reasons, El Al isn’t providing Qantas with access to El Al business class award space between the US and Israel.

Here’s hoping El Al and Qantas are able to come to an agreement that will allow passengers to use Qantas points for business class travel on El Al between the US and Israel!

Have another loyalty program question you want us to research? Hit the comments!