Etihad and El Al to collaborate with codeshare cargo and loyalty schemes

A historic deal that could stimulate some of that growth came this week as Etihad and Israel’s El Al signed an MOU to explore greater cooperation, code sharing, joint engineering and cargo services and even bringing the two airlines loyalty programmes closer together.
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The historic Etihad and El Al deal MOU was signed ‘virtually’ by Tony Douglas, group chief executive of Etihad Aviation Group, and Gonen Usishkin, chief executive of EL AL Israel Airlines. Image:  Etihad Airways.

The airlines’ destination management teams will also collaborate to encourage recipricoal inbound tourism to Abu Dhabi and Tel Aviv.

The MOU was signed ‘virtually’ by Tony Douglas, group chief executive of Etihad Aviation Group, and Gonen Usishkin, chief executive of EL AL Israel Airlines.

Douglas said: “Following EL AL’s historic flight to Abu Dhabi, the first ever flight between Israel and the UAE, this MOU is the foundation of what we envision will be a strong ongoing relationship between Abu Dhabi and Tel Aviv."