The big airline gets into trouble:
The misunderstandings between the pilots at El Al and the management, last week, led to the request for approval of a class action lawsuit against El Al, more than NIS 2.5 million.
According to the applicant, a resident of Givatayim, he was in Germany where he was informed that his flight had been canceled.
According to the application, the plaintiff purchased from Mal on flight tickets, for him and his wife, from Berlin to Israel.
On May 1, the plaintiff took off for Berlin through Easy Jet, and was scheduled to return to Israel via El Al on Thursday night.
Unfortunately for the plaintiff, on Thursday morning about an hour after he had checked in online for the flight, El Al informed him via text message that he had reached his cell phone that the flight planned to carry him back to Israel had been canceled.
The cancellation notice did not say why the flight was canceled except for the code name "Operational Circumstances", but he claimed that the headlines of the news sites told the story of the act according to which the defendant pilots went on strike, for their own benefit and ignoring the expected damages to the defendant's customers.
Photo: Yehoshua Yosef // The departure terminal at Ben Gurion Airport,
Immediately after receiving the notice of cancellation of the flight, the plaintiff began trying to contact any of the defendant's representatives, both by phone calls and by chatting with the media operated by the defendant on WhatsApp and Facebook.
Investigations made by the plaintiff with other airlines that operate flights from Berlin to Israel, revealed that the cost of a direct flight through other companies is only possible on Friday and costs about $ 500 per ticket.
Only after many inquiries and long attempts, the plaintiff was able to get Mal for a humane response or information that would guide him in acting in the circumstances, and he was told he was likely to get back the payment he paid for the flight to Israel in the face of flight cancellation. , Including a stopover in another city in Germany or a ticket for a direct flight, similar to the type of flight canceled for a Sunday night.
The plaintiff refused to accept as an alternative a flight that is not a direct flight and therefore chose to wait for a direct alternative flight, on Sunday, May 8, late at night.
According to him, in that conversation, the defendant's representative did not inform him of his eligibility for assistance services from the defendant and did not inform him of the options available to him.
When asked by the plaintiff about the accommodation, the representative told him that he had to find a hotel on his own up to a rate of $ 150 per night, but he could not refer him to a reference confirming that such an amount was indeed sitting for him.
The plaintiff and his partner were forced to urgently find a hotel for the 3 nights prior to the alternate flight and booked a hotel room for approximately $ 150 per night based on information provided to the plaintiff by the defendant's representative in a call initiated by the plaintiff and without receiving any notice or instruction other than that flight.
When the plaintiff arrived at the alternate flight, he turned on his own initiative to various parties on behalf of the defendant to try and find out what his rights were, but received no response.
Now, the plaintiff has asked the court to issue an order directing El Al to effectively inform all its customers regarding their eligibility for assistance services included in section 3 of the Aviation Services Act, in circumstances of flight cancellation - to order El Al to compensate group members in an amount equal to the cost of section 3 Aviation services, including accommodation, food and beverages, and transfers to and from the airport, for the period between the date of the canceled flight and the date of boarding an alternative flight, and to order El Al to compensate the group members for the inconvenience and mental distress To them as a result.
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