El Al, Israel's national carrier, offer a range of flights from Tel Aviv to London on a daily basis. They fly 737-800ERs to Luton, and larger 777-200ERs and 747s to London Heathrow. Although more expensive, I opted to fly to Heathrow on a 777, as I wanted to fly on a larger plane to Heathrow, and the flight times were more convenient to me.
Recently El Al have moved to terminal 4 in Heathrow, after 30 years of landing at terminal 1, due to the closure and refurbishment of terminal 1. This was my first time in terminal 4.
Departure was from Israel's Ben Gurion airport. Terminal 3 is the main terminal of the airport, with all the major carriers flying from there, including British Airways and all El Al flights. Terminal 1 is used for budget airlines and domestic flights to Eilat.
Passengers flying from Israel are advised to arrive to the airport three hours before flight time, as it is necessary to pass additional security checks. I arrived 45 minutes late so was a bit nervous about times but then realised I was doing fine for time. Before check in, passengers are asked questions about the purpose of their flights and their trips, and have passports checked my security staff. This whole process takes a while, as you have to stand in a queue with all the other passengers. After that I proceeded straight to economy class check in where there was no queue at all, checked in my bag, and received my ticket.
Security was equally fast however I was chosen at random to undergo additional screening of my hand luggage. Again, at border control there was no queue and I was straight into the departure lounge with an hour to spare until boarding. I passed the time by eating a pizza from Pizza Hut and watching the planes land and take off with a runway view seat. Below is a picture of Ben Gurion's beautiful departure lounge, with a water feature in the middle.
El Al planes rarely board on time and I was pleasantly surprised to find that boarding started an hour before flight departure, and I was sitting in my seat forty minutes before the plane was due to depart! Todays flight was full, and operated on one of the older 777s (4X-ECC) in El Al service. Every El Al plane is named after a city in Israel, and this one was called 'Holon'.
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El Al 777 4X-ECC.
On boarding the plane I was disappointed to find that this was one of El Al's older 777s. Having previously flown this route many times, I know that there are refurbished planes with newer furnishing and touchscreen VOD screens. This plane had the old low quality screens with video running on a loop, meaning you can't pause or start a movie from the beginning. In addition to this many screens in the economy cabin were not working, causing many complaints from passengers to the cabin crew, who tried in vain to rectify this problem. In addition to this my seats meal tray was lopsided at an angle and needed fixing, which made eating and placing drinks or items on the tray less comfortable. Overall this was a bit disappointing as you would expect more after paying a lot of money and choosing to fly with a national carrier rather than a budget airline.

The plane's economy cabin. I was seated in seat 51C, an aisle seat.
Departure from the gate was prompt however takeoff slightly delayed by 15 minutes on the tarmac. The on board service was a bit slow but satisfactory. Shortly after takeoff the cabin crew served each passenger a small snack of crackers and a drink. I asked for a glass of red wine and a coke. The wine is poured from a large bottle in to an individual glass as is the coke. This feels a bit cheaper than other airlines such as BA who would give you an individual bottle from a larger choice of drinks, and once again I felt like I was getting less from El Al. In addition to this, this was the only drinks run they did the whole five hour flight, apart from tea and coffee, and I would have expected at least one more drinks run after the meal. Later on in the flight I went to the cabin crew to request another drink, but they had ran out of many things so I settled for another coke.

El Al carries many religious passengers who order specific kosher meals. This means there is a large amount of special meals to hand out, which means waiting a bit longer for your meal. When my meal eventually did arrive, I was offered chicken meat balls with cous cous or pasta with bolognese I opted for the chicken meatballs. The meal arrived hot, with pita, hummus, salad, mineral water and desert. The humus and pitta was delicious. The chicken and cous cous was served hot and tasty however the portions were very small and I was left feeling still hungry after the meal. Lucky I had that pizza before boarding.
The flight in general was nice and quiet, and overall the service was good. We landed fifteen minutes ahead of schedule. I still felt like there was a lot of room for improvement, particularly when the prices match that of BA whose service I feel is much better. I am looking forward to see how they perform on the return flight, before making a decision to fly British Airways next time I take this route.
Stay tuned for the return flight review!
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