22/5/97

Half the fun is flying there

    Na Nach Nachma Nachman from El Al.
    Nachman Klieman is the spokesman, PR manager -- and complaints trouble-shooter -- for the first Hebrew airline in 2,000 years. He seems the perfect sort of chap to put his ear on the line. He's sympathetic and earnest, rather than slick and glib. He prefers the personal approach over form letters. When you've got Klieman on the phone, El Al doesn't seem so monolithic.
    The former Chicagoan, at 49 the same age as his favorite airline, can reel off facts and stats and survey results and industry comparisons, but that's not Not Page One stuff. It's the stories he tells....
    "There was this one lady, a woman journalist from Tel Aviv, who objected to prayers being conducted near her seat. She asked that they be stopped, even threatening to strip. She was told, sorry, if you'll be a bit patient, they'll be finished soon. 
    "Sure enough, she stood up in front of the men, and started removing her blouse. Well, she ended up backing down before they did, and lost her nerve before going too far."
    The minyan is, of course, a trademark of El Al. "It gives people a feeling of being at home, and it's not just religious Jews, it's religious Christians as well. Sure, some people complain a bit, but generally Israelis won't pay any attention to it; tourists do, they admire it; you'll see them craning their heads to watch.
    "El Al has created an environment that we're proud of," says Klieman. "The taste of Israel starts as soon as you get on board."
    For good and bad.
    "There's an attitude of 'this is my airline, since I pay taxes, and I can do what I want and if they tell me not to smoke in a non-smoking area, I can ignore them because this is my company and I can do so.
    "On the other hand, there's an environment of friendliness where people talk to each other. You may not see that in other airlines, where people just sit there and don't move throughout the flight."
    Mind you, other airlines like it that way. "Tel Aviv is recognized in the industry as a difficult destination. The passengers are, um, a little more difficult."
    We like to see what we can get away with.
    "We had a couple check into a flight where the woman was nine months pregnant. She hid that fact by wearing a large coat. Technically, you're not allowed to fly after the seventh month unless there's a doctor's letter.
    "Anyway, the plane took off, non-stop to New York, fully loaded with 400 passengers. About three hours out of Tel Aviv, she went into labor.
    "They decided to land in London, but that meant getting special authorization, because of noise-abatement restrictions; we had to prepare an ambulance, wake up El Al staff in the early morning to get to the airport to take care of all the passengers and the aircraft. And of course there was the huge inconvenience to 400 people, the missed connections.
    "We incurred a lot of anger, and a lot of unnecessary costs such as landing fees and takeoff fees and handling fees and refueling and time loss. Anyway, we got the woman to a hospital in time, and she had the baby.
    "Now, technically, we could have sued her. But instead, we sent her flowers.
    "That's the kind of thing that sets us apart, our compassion.
    "Remember, we're the airline that dropped everything and changed its schedules to bring hundreds of thousands of Russian immigrants day and night to Israel; that converted an airplane, instead of in 12 days, overnight, to bring Ethiopian immigrants during Operation Solomon."
    Klieman brightens as he recalls another story. "We had a passenger to Frankfurt who lost his wallet in the terminal, containing about $3,000 in cash. One of our ground hostesses found it. We traced the passenger to his flight and we let our Operations Department know, and they radioed the pilot, who relayed the message to the purser who went and told the passenger. He didn't even realize he'd lost it.
    "We told him not to worry, we'd put the wallet on the next flight to Frankfurt, so you'll get it tomorrow, we'll make all the arrangements. The guy was thrilled, wow, what service!
    "A little while later he calls over the purser and says he's got a problem. He has a meeting in Frankfurt, and the guy's name, address and phone number were in the wallet. 'Can you help me?' he said.
    "So the purser went back to the pilot, who radioed Operations, who contacted Lost and Found, who looked in the wallet and got the information, which was relayed back the same route through Operations, to the pilot, the purser, the passenger."
    El Al now enjoys a good image, Klieman says, "but sometimes one incident can damage all our efforts, and it may not even be our fault. Like there was a story in Ma'ariv about El Al security. The reporter planted a dummy bomb at the airport and then took off on a flight. The bomb wasn't detected and the story stressed that El Al security flubbed this thing and missed the bomb.
    "But security at Ben-Gurion is not done by us. We argued vehemently with the newspaper to set the record straight. It didn't work. They realized there was much more sensationalism in using El Al than saying just 'airport security'."
    One of El Al's best marketing coups, and certainly its most peculiar, dates back to the mid-1980s and its effects are still being felt. "We heard about a young boy in the States whose father was a Sioux Indian, and his mother Jewish. The boy, Little Sun Bordeaux, was the heir to the title of Chief. We looked into it and found out that he was truly Jewish, having been circumcised by a Denver mohel.
    "We invited him to celebrate his bar mitzva here. The result, in public relations, was outstanding. Wherever he went, from the moment he came off the plane, he was covered by the foreign media, even Japanese TV. The aftereffect was, in the United States, people began to realize they could come here for a second bar mitzva celebration. It gave a boost to an industry that has grown tremendously."
    The very first El Al passenger was Chief of the Twelve Tribes, paleface president Chaim Weizmann.
    He had to be flown here in September 1948 from Geneva for his induction. Problem was, the only planes the new state owned were military, which were not permitted to land on a civilian airfield.
    "So overnight, the new government created a national airline. They demobilized a military plane, bolted in two sofas and painted the outside with the biblical phrase 'El Al.' Then they found a good-looking secretary, who was working late, and made her our first stewardess."
    It was a daring risk: putting a passenger in flight without having set up a complaints department.