Flying Alitalia, Being Nice to Israeli Civil Servants, Defense Minister Peretz, and Other Ideas of Questionable Utility
Some overwrought Israeli traveler has an article up on Ynet complaining that Israeli civil servants will now be flying Alitalia for business instead of using El Al. Up until this deal with Alitalia was worked out, Israeli civil servants were legally obligated to use El Al for overseas travel having to do with their job - a privilege that the airline had carried with it from its pre-privatization days. The author points out that El Al "conducted itself like a national airline" during the war - they readily assisted in canceling or changing tickets, they declined to cut routes even though they had almost no passengers at times, etc. The argument is that the Israeli government should, if not reward the airline, then at the very least not strip it of whatever national-airline trappings it still has:
A few days ago I rubbed my eyes in disbelief at the sight of an item in the financial section of the newspaper; it was entitled "The end of El Al's monopoly." The article mentioned the agreement signed between the Italian airline Alitalia, noting that Israel's civil servants would from now on fly Alitalia when on duty... This may seem like a trivial matter, but it is not. El Al 2006 is a privately owned company, and the rules of open skies apply to El Al as well. However, beyond its history and national obligations, it decided to contribute to the war effort. And then at the worst possible, cynical and humiliating time – this item appeared in the newspaper. While El Al is still licking its wounds (millions of dollars and many lost flight hours) and while we are embracing the north and assisting our tourists, the Israeli government has announced that the largest airline in Israel, the one that employs thousands has decided to finance the Italian airline from the Israeli tax payer's pocket.
The rest of the article continues in a similar vein, culminating in the statement that the government has 'lost its self-respect'. And don't get us wrong - self-respect is sometimes important. Then again, saving NIS 10 million / year is sometimes important too (just think about what the country could do with that sum - it's enough to provide welfare for three, maybe even four large Jerusalem families). Also, we can't shake the fact that we're actually discussing the self-respect of the Israeli government - you'd think that the investigations and indictments of like a billion of their ministers would have pretty much taken care of that. And it's not like individual Israeli civil servants should be walking around with self-esteem. Or rather, if they do, then they should immediately be fired for (a) obviously being psychotic and (b) not fitting into whatever office they work. We guess what we're saying is that the "self-respect of the Israeli government" is not an overwhelmingly impressive argument.
There are, however, at least two more reasons - not discussed in the article - why this is a bad idea. First, Israeli civil servants shouldn't have to use Alitalia for the same reason that no one should have to use Alitalia - Alitalia sucks. Not just regular airline suck. Like they really put a lot of thought and effort into being bad at their jobs. Their planes are always behind schedule. Their service is abysmal both on the ground and in the air (how this author could described Alitalia employees as "charming" is beyond us - you can check out their Wikipedia entry, starting with the phrase "Alitalia was infamous for its customer services"). And yet - again - the fact that we're talking about Israeli civil servants changes everything. We know that Alitalia has delays and bad service? Perfect! Let's go ahead and sign up every civil servant twice! Or we can go one step further and set up a new government efficiency-enhancing policy: as a condition of employment, every civil servant will have spend at least one weekend a month flying somewhere on Alitalia. If they screw up, they have to do it more than one weekend a year as a penalty. Now, eventually a civil servant will ask why everyone has to suffer a mandatory one-weekend penalty every month. When that happens, go ahead and say it's because of their bad customer service. Even if you don't know what they did, don't worry - they certainly do.
Listen, self-respect is just kind of a silly reason not to change a bad policy. On the other hand, there's really not enough money being saved to justify the trouble of a policy change. Neither side is making particularly good arguments - which is unfortunate, because there's actually a decent reason to have Israeli civil servants flying El al. It can be summed up by presenting two facts. Fact 1: El Al is the most secure airline in the world. Fact 2: Less than two months ago, we were able to board an Alitalia plane in Milan without showing out boarding pass - because the pass had fallen to the bottom of our backpack and the girl who was checking tickets didn't want to hold up the line.
Now, there are these groups of people who live in lots of different countries - let's agree for the purpose of this post to call these people "terrorists". And of all the hobbies in the world, these "terrorists" seem like two things best of all: killing Israelis and hijacking planes. So if you put a bunch of middling-to-somewhat important Israeli officials on a really badly guarded plane... well, you see where this goes. MR verdict: this is the worst idea that the Olmert government has had since Peretz was appointed Defense Minister. Unless you count just about everything Peretz did as Defense Minister - then it just gets hard to rank.
A few days ago I rubbed my eyes in disbelief at the sight of an item in the financial section of the newspaper; it was entitled "The end of El Al's monopoly." The article mentioned the agreement signed between the Italian airline Alitalia, noting that Israel's civil servants would from now on fly Alitalia when on duty... This may seem like a trivial matter, but it is not. El Al 2006 is a privately owned company, and the rules of open skies apply to El Al as well. However, beyond its history and national obligations, it decided to contribute to the war effort. And then at the worst possible, cynical and humiliating time – this item appeared in the newspaper. While El Al is still licking its wounds (millions of dollars and many lost flight hours) and while we are embracing the north and assisting our tourists, the Israeli government has announced that the largest airline in Israel, the one that employs thousands has decided to finance the Italian airline from the Israeli tax payer's pocket.
The rest of the article continues in a similar vein, culminating in the statement that the government has 'lost its self-respect'. And don't get us wrong - self-respect is sometimes important. Then again, saving NIS 10 million / year is sometimes important too (just think about what the country could do with that sum - it's enough to provide welfare for three, maybe even four large Jerusalem families). Also, we can't shake the fact that we're actually discussing the self-respect of the Israeli government - you'd think that the investigations and indictments of like a billion of their ministers would have pretty much taken care of that. And it's not like individual Israeli civil servants should be walking around with self-esteem. Or rather, if they do, then they should immediately be fired for (a) obviously being psychotic and (b) not fitting into whatever office they work. We guess what we're saying is that the "self-respect of the Israeli government" is not an overwhelmingly impressive argument.
There are, however, at least two more reasons - not discussed in the article - why this is a bad idea. First, Israeli civil servants shouldn't have to use Alitalia for the same reason that no one should have to use Alitalia - Alitalia sucks. Not just regular airline suck. Like they really put a lot of thought and effort into being bad at their jobs. Their planes are always behind schedule. Their service is abysmal both on the ground and in the air (how this author could described Alitalia employees as "charming" is beyond us - you can check out their Wikipedia entry, starting with the phrase "Alitalia was infamous for its customer services"). And yet - again - the fact that we're talking about Israeli civil servants changes everything. We know that Alitalia has delays and bad service? Perfect! Let's go ahead and sign up every civil servant twice! Or we can go one step further and set up a new government efficiency-enhancing policy: as a condition of employment, every civil servant will have spend at least one weekend a month flying somewhere on Alitalia. If they screw up, they have to do it more than one weekend a year as a penalty. Now, eventually a civil servant will ask why everyone has to suffer a mandatory one-weekend penalty every month. When that happens, go ahead and say it's because of their bad customer service. Even if you don't know what they did, don't worry - they certainly do.
Listen, self-respect is just kind of a silly reason not to change a bad policy. On the other hand, there's really not enough money being saved to justify the trouble of a policy change. Neither side is making particularly good arguments - which is unfortunate, because there's actually a decent reason to have Israeli civil servants flying El al. It can be summed up by presenting two facts. Fact 1: El Al is the most secure airline in the world. Fact 2: Less than two months ago, we were able to board an Alitalia plane in Milan without showing out boarding pass - because the pass had fallen to the bottom of our backpack and the girl who was checking tickets didn't want to hold up the line.
Now, there are these groups of people who live in lots of different countries - let's agree for the purpose of this post to call these people "terrorists". And of all the hobbies in the world, these "terrorists" seem like two things best of all: killing Israelis and hijacking planes. So if you put a bunch of middling-to-somewhat important Israeli officials on a really badly guarded plane... well, you see where this goes. MR verdict: this is the worst idea that the Olmert government has had since Peretz was appointed Defense Minister. Unless you count just about everything Peretz did as Defense Minister - then it just gets hard to rank.
