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When it comes to Kashruth people are so meticulus, very careful on Hashghchas, owners, However when it comes to flying they are willing to risk it and when Kashruth Fails they blame the failure on themselves (Like when a butcher sells non-kosher as kosher and fools people) however when Flying close to shabbos fails they blame the airline and not themselves.
If you are serious about Shabbos you will not board long distance plane on Thursday or Friday , especially in the winter
When the pilot lied and said he’s returning to the terminal to drop off passengers who didn’t want to fly (since the flight was already delayed five hours) and instead took off into the air a few minutes after lying, a passenger or two should have immediately collapsed into the aisle and pretended to be having a medical attack and remained unresponsive until the plane landed and medical personnel came aboard to take him off.
rabbi shlomo perl tzatzal GAVE A Hilchos shabbos SHIUR FOR MANY YEARS IN flatbush (recordings are available at kolhaloshon. his oft repeated MANTRA for EREV SHAbbos TRAVEL was “double the time” even to lakewood and the catskills.
So according to joseph, passengers should have lied by fake collapsing . Why? Because they decided to fly so close to shabbos when a we all know that that was against halacha.
But then again its always someone elses fault.Ah, the benefits of a Yeshiva education! It’s “meticulous”!
El Al’s policy is not to fly on Shabbos, and in fact, the flight that was diverted to Athens did NOT fly on Shabbos (the other flight was given a Psak to continue). As long as one is prepared to be stuck in an airport over Shabbos if necessary, why should someone – who for various reasons, can not fly on Wednesday – not take a Thursday flight?
There are a significant number of Israelis who are “commuters” – their families are in Israel, while they work in the US (or Europe), who fly home for Shabbos every week. For people like that, leaving Wednesday is not an option. So please, don’t be so judgemental about the situation.
an Israeli Yid (who frequently flies on Thursday night, with emergency supplies in my hand luggage)
AIY – There is nothing wrong with taking a very strong stand against flying on Friday but yes, you are correct. It is stupidity to judge those who do fly without having a clue about what put them there to begin with. People need to stop using religious causes as an excuse to belittle people. Complain about the behavior but leave the unknowns alone.
Of course flights are subject to delays, and booking a flight due to land an hour before Shabbos is just asking for trouble, which is why there were probably no shomrei shabbos on the flight that got the “heter” to land on Shabbos. But “double the time” for a flight makes no sense at all, anyone who promotes it is an idiot, and anyone who claims it’s a din is forging the Torah. <i>A fifteen-hour flight is no more subject to delays than a one-hour flight</i>. Unlike a car, once a plane is in the air it’s not affected by local weather. On the contrary, the longer the flight the more opportunity there is to catch up by flying faster if you catch a good wind. Either 5 hours is enough buffer time for a one-hour flight or it’s not; but if it is then it must be enough for a ten- or fifteen-hour flight. And to claim that a fifteen-hour flight needs a fifteen-hour buffer is ridiculous.
Those who flew on the 6:30 flight, due in at 11:40 Friday <i>morning</i>, obviously believed 5 hours is sufficient allowance for delays. In this case it proved inadequate, but what would you say if they’d left 10 hours and the flight ended up delayed 11? You’d be saying the same thing no matter <i>how</i> long they left. What are they supposed to do? For a lot of people it’s not practical to leave on Wednesday; they’re in NY to do business, to work, to have meetings, to do whatever, and you can’t tell them to lose the whole Thursday as well as Friday.
It’s understood that some people have no but to travel Thursday eves . Yet, how many on this flight were in that category? And which of the 2 categories produced this vitriolic letter against El Al, lectures on shmiras Shabbos, lectures on how our grandparents sacrificed for Shabbos…. Fire & brimstone… An unfortunate set of circumstances happened, I’m not going to be talked into believing that El Al did something on purpose.. My gut tells me it’s not my dentist who flies back & forth every 2 weeks because of oarnassah.. Yiddish expression :
Oif’n ganev brent dus hittel.. ( the hat on a thief’s hat burns)ZD – you state that “It takes a couple of hours to go through security and get your stuff”. I can tell you that most commuters or other frequent travelers take far shorter. I know that when I’m scheduled to land in Israel on Friday afternoon, I will not take checked luggage, so no wait there, and as an Israeli citizen with an electronic passport card, it takes me less than three minutes to clear passport control. As such, it’s generally 15 minutes or so from when the door of the plane opens until I’m outside, getting into the taxi I’ve pre-arranged to have waiting for me. Total time from when we land until I’m at home? Generally about an hour or so.
Based on the above, and given business requirements, I am OK with taking flights that are scheduled to land on Friday afternoon, though I always make contingency plans in case there are delays – whether in the US. in Europe when on a connecting flight, or in case we land in Israel close to Shabbos. B”H I’ve not had to use them yet (it’s been close, but I made it), but I know the risk of getting stuck and accept it. The main failure of El Al in this story is that they gave no or wrong information to passengers, thereby not enabling them to make informed choices – but to just say “how could anyone fly at 6:00 PM on a Thursday” is just ridiculous.
an Israeli Yid
Zdad, I love that last post!!!! I think nisht should come in here and give you a big hug for that one!
It’s pretty known that one shouldn’t fly on Friday. I once flew to Israel from JFK on a Wednesday night, and I was nervous.
There are actually codified halachos for setting out on a sea-voyage before Shabbos. I don’t understand why no such gezeirah has been made for air-travel. Maybe it has, and I just haven’t heard of it.
I personally would not choose to fly on a Thursday evening flight in the winter, however I wouldn’t be so quick to mock everyone who does. If I had my choice, I would not travel to where my office is each Friday in the winter. For many being stuck in NY would be as bad or worse than being stuck in Greece. Nor would I start to create my own gedarim. And not hugging ZD is not my own geder.
How about being meticulous with the spelling of “meticulous?”
The Wolf
Neville Chamberlain, there are no restrictions on sea voyages if you will get off before Shabbos. The issur on embarking on a voyage from Wednesday (except for a mitzvah) applies only if you are planning to still be at sea on Shabbos.
And the issur on traveling on Friday after noon (which I will point out this flight was <i>not</i>) only applies if you are not expected at your destination. You can’t show up somewhere an hour before Shabbos and say “surprise, here I am, throw another few potatoes in the cholent”. Nowadays with phones and instant communication that halacha is almost completely obsolete.
I really don’t get the nitpicking about spelling
Although I agree that it’s not a great idea to travel close to Shabbos, as Milhouse points out, there’s no halacha against it, and the chances of actual chillul Shabbos resulting from flying one of these flights is very small.
The chances of an inconvenient Shabbos is a little bigger, but still not likely.
It’s not only people looking for a cheaper flight who take these flights, it’s often the only option, as AIY points out.
If you want to take a lesson to be more cautious when possible, fine, but I think it’s out of place to judge people for this.
I hope I didn’t spell anything wrong.
ZD, the one that was to have been rerouted to Rome (but ended up landing in Israel on Shabbos) was due in an hour before shkiah, so I’m sure there were no shomrei shabbos on it (except maybe one or two who live right next to the airport, and had an emergency). I suspect that this was a factor in R Yosef’s decision to give a heter for it to continue into Shabbos.
I’m surprised at how many frum people were apparently on the flight. I once had to fly to Israel on Thursday night for an emergency. The only frum-looking people on the flight were a chassidish family and me.
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