El Al's 'Cockpit' Program Is Like Silicon Valley in the Sky

Written by Lilit Marcus The Israeli airline is investing in startups that have an aviation-tech component. Israel is known for its booming tech scene. And its national carrier, El Al, has developed a new program that is helping bring some of these startups on-board to benefit fliers. Henry Chen Weinstein is the CEO of Cockpit, a program that El Al launched in May 2015. Weinstein and his colleagues saw a smaller number of tech startups expressing interest in aviation, likely because the field is harder to break into than other tech companies. He decided to harness Israel's entrepreneurial scene and partner with businesspeople who had ideas that could work either on-board or behind the scenes of an airline.

"Aviation is a risk-averse industry," Weinstein told Condé Nast Traveler. "The profit margin is small. Airlines are not pure tech companies. They don’t necessarily understand technology or how to implement it. They want to help people travel. Really big companies work slowly, because that’s their DNA, it’s dangerous to work too fast. Startups are exactly the opposite. They need to work fast, because otherwise they’ll die fast." One way to get startups and airlines on the same page was by opening up El Al's front door to the tech community in Israel and beyond—so far, Cockpit is working with startups in the U.S., France, and the Czech Republic as well as their native country. The goal? To take brilliant ideas, give their inventors financial support and mentoring, then get an end result that benefits El Al's customers. One of those ideas has already been implemented: A company came in with a concept for a blanket that would stay put, even during meals or if the customer moved around in their sleep. After months of behind-the-scenes product testing, the SmartCover blanket was introduced on the airline's busy New York-to-Tel Aviv route, and it was enough of a hit that it'll be rolling out onto more planes soon. And some of Cockpit's brilliant ideas have affected customers in less obvious ways, including an innovation that sped up the time it took a customer to book a flight online. Another program, Shop and Fly, came out of a recognition that if a flier forgot an item, say a phone charger or an adapter, he would spend twice as much money replacing it at the airport than at his destination. Now, El Al and one of their partners are working on a program where a flier could identify a product they needed and El Al's app would let them know where it was the cheapest (departure airport, arrival airport, or hotel), then buy it for them and have it waiting at the appropriate spot. For Weinstein, who studied at Tel Aviv University's Entrepreneurship Center, Cockpit is ultimately about forging relationships—whether that's the one between a startup and a brand or between a business and a customer. It's also about incubating ideas that might be discarded otherwise and giving entrepreneurs the money, support, and mentoring they need to make their dreams a reality. But Weinstein downplays his role, saying that even the smallest idea can turn into a big advancement. "Water flows downstream, and entrepreneurs are similar," he says. "They won’t go where it’s tough to implement, so we need to open these doors."