A few weeks ago the Israeli court has made its final rule in the case of El-Al versus Israir and has determined that the “Open skies" policy of the ministry of transportation is valid, thus opening the Israeli skies for carrier competition on the Tel Aviv (TLV) New-York line which has so far been exclusive for El-Al flights.

Just after the court verdict, Sabina Biran – Israir C.E.O spoke about this change on several interviews and promised that the new opportunities for Israir will result in lower prices and better service for all passengers.

In the following weeks, Israir did introduce lower priced tickets for as low as 550$ for a ticket from Tel-Aviv to New York which used to cost 590$ at its lowest price points. Like many other Israelis, I decided to grab the opportunity and try out the newly launched flight, and following are my impressions of that flight.

In general I would like to note that I personally have flown to NY about 35 times already, and have grown accustomed to this difficult 12 hour flight. However, the Israir flight has not been a good experience for me, and was in fact the most difficult TLV-NY flight I have experienced.

It all started from the easy-going atmosphere on the airplane – like some North American airlines Israir crews try and “lighten" the flight burden with comic relieves which in my opinion result in a disrespectful manner. Jokes like “This flight is a non-smoking flight, smokers may go directly to the airplane wings where the fuel tanks are for a quick and efficient blow", or “If you’re not enjoying this flight you may use one of the 8 emergency exits on this airplane" have great contribution to the disrespectful atmosphere.

Another weak point for Israir was the food – all food was Glatt Kosher, which does not necessarily mean bad food, but on Israir case meant extremely bad food. I don’t expect flights to be a culinary experience, but this was non edible food at the least.

The third and most annoying thing was the number of seats the airplane has – for years Israeli travelers have complained that El-Al crowds the airplanes to the extreme, and well, on this Israir flight all I could wish for is El-Al’s relative comfortable seating.

In conclusion, I do wish that the open skies policy will result in greater competition and better service as Israir CEO promised, but to say the least - I did not see that happening.