El Al and Japanese carrier ANA announced they will begin a codeshare partnership in Spring 2024.
More excitingly, the airlines also announced plans to sign a Frequent Flyer Program agreement with reciprocal frequent flyer benefits and premium customer benefits.
Currently, El Al has reciprocal frequent flyer redemption with Alaska (more info here), Etihad (more info here), and Qantas (more info here).
Frankly, I’m a bit surprised that El Al is partnering with Star Alliance carrier ANA and not OneWorld carrier JAL. With multiple existing OneWorld codeshare and frequent flyer partnerships and with AA being so weak in the Israeli market, I just assumed that El Al would eventually join OneWorld and renew their AA partnership in the future. Of course that can still happen even with this news, as airlines can generally partner with airlines in any alliance.
While Qantas has decent rates for El Al flights, they are blocked from booking most awards. Alaska and Etihad have more booking options, but can be pricey.
On the other hand, ANA has 2 lucrative award charts. One of them, the incredible Star Alliance round-the-world chart, wouldn’t apply to El Al.
However the zone based chart is also very good and works for alliance and non-alliance partners. It allows you to book round-trip flights between North America and the Middle East for 65K miles in coach or 104K miles in business class.
While a round-trip is required with ANA, the miles needed to book are less than half of what Etihad charges to book travel on El Al!
You can transfer points from AMEX to ANA at a 1:1 ratio.
ANA awards are bookable on their website after logging in:
Arigato gozaimasu to ANA if they can pull off redemptions like that for travel on El Al!
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24 Comments On "El Al Will Add A 4th Mileage Partner, And It May Just Be A Game Changer!"
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According to this they also signed codeshare with SAS
interesting if redmeption is on the way
They have lots of codeshare partners, but that doesn’t indicate a mileage partnership.
Elal business Roundtrip could potentially cost 104k miles?? Hatzlacha
ANA doesn’t allow last minute bookings. I think the cut off is 96 hours. Thats the time when most award flight become available.
Maybe it’s different with ElAl.
Also, point transfers from Credit Cards take a few days.
El Al awards are usually more plentiful further out (though still rare). Also, I’ve never done it but I’ve heard you can book a flight that’s further than 4 days out and call ANA to switch to the closer one
Got to try that one..
Thank you.
That’s 1.5 yrs away…. Would have been nice to see quicker progress
Where do you see 1.5 years?
Arigato gozaimasu? 🙂
https://letmegooglethat.com/?q=translate+Arigato+gozaimasu+
Ana can mix Star alliance and other partners on one award?
No way this lasts
ye cant see United allowing them to undercut their TLV market.
can’t wait for the day Elal joins a major alliance!
When does this start?
Doesn’t ANA charges high taxes ??
Did you see the screenshots in the post? That’s thr same taxes you’d pay thru United
taxes/fuel surcharges?
Where do you see that they will also partner on other routes?
On Ana’s press release they state that, “The airlines are also planning to sign a Frequent Flyer Program agreement, enhancing benefits for mileage members traveling BETWEEN JAPAN AND ISRAEL”.
Same reason the other agreements highlight benefits for travel to the US, Australia, and UAE. They highlight the primary focus of the mileage agreement, but they’re not limited to those regions.
Can you mix and match on ANA between all star alliance members for a round trip travel business class nyc to Israel ?
Why not?
Any other way to get Ana points besides amex ?
Marriott.
Whats the cancellation policy for Ana awards?
3,000 points