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Delta Air Lines' new partnership with Israeli flag carrier El Al officially took off this past Monday, with the Atlanta-based carrier teasing that award redemptions would happen in short order. While we figured this wouldn't roll out until early 2024, we can now report that booking El Al flights with Delta SkyMiles is already live!
Here's what we know about the latest development in this partnership.
You Can Now Book El Al Flights With Delta SkyMiles
Delta's rollout of El Al awards started late Wednesday but was limited to itineraries from Asia, including convoluted connecting trips that were only worth booking if you enjoy spending a lot of time in an airport.
Now, Delta has expanded the awards you can book to El Al's entire route map — a welcome development for those with SkyMiles to redeem.
Generally speaking, the pricing is a mixed bag. Award tickets to and from the United States — like on most Delta partner airlines — don't make sense to book unless it's a last-resort situation. Each U.S. gateway features similar pricing, give or take a few thousand miles depending on the class of travel. Business class awards are the most steep, coming in at 320,000 SkyMiles for each direction.
But if you spin the globe and originate from one of El Al's other international gateways, the pricing in all classes of travel starts to look pretty good. Well, at least when you compare it to those prices to and from the United States. It's not very often you can use SkyMiles to book an award on a 9-hour flight for just 70,000 miles in business class.
It's worth noting that economy tickets from the U.S. to Tel Aviv cost more than business class tickets from Japan or Thailand to Tel Aviv — for an almost equally long flight.
Getting Delta SkyMiles
Although they're not the most valuable of currencies in the points and miles world, Delta SkyMiles are relatively easy to come by, courtesy of a wide variety of Delta credit card offerings. Additionally, you can buy Delta miles or transfer points from the following major transferrable point programs to Delta SkyMiles:
Related: Do Delta SkyMiles Expire?
Final Thoughts
Award searches on Delta's website are turning up El Al results, which means the partnership between the two carriers is moving right along. Unfortunately, pricing in every class of travel to and from the United States is borderline unserious compared to award prices to and from virtually every other country El Al flies to.
Even though more redemption options are far preferable to less, there's limited utility to El Al redemptions — at least from the U.S. Sadly, this story isn't an outlier; it's like that for most of Delta's partner airlines. However, travelers may get some value when booking El Al awards from a non-U.S. country.
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