Sometimes you have to wonder what goes in marketeers minds when they decide names for companies or products.
Today’s wonder is El-Al’s budget carrier offshoot – to be called UP.
In the first phase, the airline will serve five European destinations:
– Berlin up to 11 times a week
– Budapest up to 11 times a week
– Kiev up to 11 times a week
– Prague 11 up to times a week
– Larnaca up to 6 times a week
UP will commence service on the 30th March.
There will be two sorts of fares with UP – a basic fare from $69 to $99 depending on route, with everything else buy-able on top, and an all-in-one product called “Smart” that bundles everything together.
Add-ons will set you back if you’re on a basic ticket:
– $10 to $80 for an ore-assigned seat depending where it is and if it’s in a particular section of a plane
– Luggage will be carried at $20, rising to $40 at the airport
– Check in will set you back $10
– IFE Headphones will set you back money too
– Food and Drink will also set you back cash. R
El Al’s Matmid Frequent Flyer Club Members will get points on these services too. Silver members get 10% extra, Gold Members get 25% extra, Platinum get 50% extra. In terms of free seats, Silvers are allowed to select a free non-premium seat, whilst premium members can select seats in the Economy Plus segment of the plane.
In terms of the carrier itself, it is answering the call of competition that open skies between the EU and Israel have signed, and that is going into effect (as EasyJet is taking advantage of notably). It’s also another chapter of a legacy airline setting up a lower-cost (to the airline) unit to handle the work that is too expensive for the mainline to handle.
How UP will handle itself in the rough and tumble of the Low Cost Airline market in Europe, is another question completely….
… And as for the name, this ranks as well as Air Asia Japan’s rebrand into Vanilla… Is this the best that they could come up with?
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Perhaps “Up” is just a simplified English translation of their Hebrew name, for ʿEl ʾAl means ‘towards the heights/heavens – upwards.’
Two things: first, “$10 to $80 for an ore-assigned seat” – what’s an ore-assigned seat? (I’m not being merely facetious – while I got the meaning from the context, I don’t have any clue what the word actually was). Second, “Check in will set you back $10” – I hope this is in-airport check in, and not check in in general, which would be somewhat of an odd fee (pay us $10 or we won’t let you use the ticket at all… that won’t go over well.)