The following is an unedited article currently on the Huffington Post website:
An international Delta Airlines flight was reportedly delayed for roughly half an hour on Friday when several ultra-Orthodox Jewish men refused to sit next to female passengers.
Israel Radio first reported that Delta Flight 468, bound for Tel Aviv’s Ben Gurion Airport from John F. Kennedy Airport, took off 30 minutes after its scheduled departure time due to commotion onboard. Several Haredi, or ultra-Orthodox men, refused to sit in their assigned seats, which placed them next to women. But other passengers also refused to swap seats with the men, causing the prolonged delay.
In Ultra-orthodox Judaism, physical contact between men and women is forbiddenunless they are first-degree relatives or married to one another.
HuffPost reached out to Delta Airlines for comment but did not hear back.
A similar incident affected an El Al flight from New York to Tel Aviv in September when Haredi men began asking women seated next to them to move and even offered compensation for seat changes. Many called the flight an “11-hour long nightmare” and several women started a Change.org petition after the experience to pressure El Al to prevent future harassment of female passengers on its flights.
(Source: Huffington Post)
Join the official YWN WhatsApp status
26 Responses
Ultra orthodox jews on a flight from NY to Tel Aviv on Friday????
Each man should purchase two seats, that would be a solution,
These idiots should be put on a “no-fly” list for life and also charged for the thousands of dollars of costs incurred due to the delay. At a minimum, they should have been dragged off the plane for not obeying the directive of the flight attendant to sit in their assigned seats.
Something’s fishy here IMHO.
The provided info is too sketchy.
It’s been 3 months since the reported September incident.
By now more details should have been ascertained and been made available.
Are we talking about 2 men in September, and 2 men again this time?
The article makes it sound like there were a dozen men (or so) each time.
Were these men misled with promises by the Airlines that they will be seated next to males?
Or are we dealing with 2 or 4 Meshuganehs that decided to book flights and gamble that luck will assure them proper seating??
I would love to hear/read the men’s side of the story. Why weren’t any of them interviewed until now? (Otherwise I would have expected the article to state that they declined being interviewed.)
Were the men arrested or sued/fined for the disturbances?
Or were the Booking-agents partially at fault?
Until I find out more details, I’m gonna take this report with a grain of salt…
Your allowed so sit next to Woman on plain…
Rav Pam
These noodniks should take boat next time…a slow one…to China..
“HARASSMENT” of female passengers? They were asked nicely to please switch seats to accommodate the religious requirements of their fellow male passengers. Since when is it so hard to do a favor for someone who really needs it? They were not being inconvenienced at all, and it would help these Orthodox, sincerely religious men out! Since when is it so hard to help another being out with his dilemma? Where is the human kindness and consideration that we expect most people to proffer to others? Describing the request as “harassment” is the worst kind of bias and prejudice!
Would Delta of Huffpost dare make a fuss about this if it was a Muslim man complaining? The answer is absolutely not but orthodox Haredim are open fodder for them as well as for some of YWN commentators.
They should have been de-planed and locked up. Chumras are fine so long as they are personal. When they start adversely affecting others, things have gone wrong. I agree with #3, put them on a “no fly” list. Setting that example, and promising that anyone else who starts this sort of nonsense will suffer the same fate, will solve this problem very quickly.
yasher koach to sporges for finding the fallacy in the huff and puffington post whereas # 3 saw only what his/her anti frum wanted to see
What’s the problem? Make a section on the plane where for extra charge this can be set up in advance. End of problem and everyone happy.
Anyone who doesn’t like it, you have the right to not like it. I will defend your absolute right to not like it every time it reoccurs.
All ppl chill out pls
Did anyone bother checking the flight history for this flight? I did.
http://flightaware.com/live/flight/DAL468/history/20141227/0223Z/KJFK/LLBG/times
Tell me please, how likely is it that frum people were on a flight SCHEDULED to land in TLV at 2:51 PM Israeli time when Shabbos begins at approx. 4PM???? I believe this is typical Huffington Post slander.
Idiots like these guys consistently make a chilul hashem out of this and then the bahbys, avi732s and mbachurs of the world defend this nonsense. Just to be clear: its never a chilul hashem when you’re doing a mitzvah or following halacha no matter what people think but to take this chumra and make a whole scene out of it inconveniencing everyone else onboard is a massive chilul hashem. Be frum on your own time, not everyone elses. These clowns should’ve been kicked off the plane, no questions asked.
jewyorker,
where does it say anywhere in my post im defending people
im saying this news article is a hoax as per #1s post
chill
Thank you Delta for not commenting and turning this into a major chulent with the haters, jewish or otherwise.
The airlines have precedent for this, since British Airways & Air New Zealand & Qantas will not allow a male passenger to sit next to a child [unless his own child] since they are assuming every man to be a pedophile. So when the airline discriminates against all innocent men, no-one says boo about it.
Mbachur— irrespective of the facts of this present case, we know this type of behavior exists and is defended online by numbnuts who don’t know the difference between halacha and a personal chumra that’s annoying to everyone else onboard and consistently creates a massive chilul hashem. Your potshot at gadolhadorah calling him/her “anti frum” would seem to place you within the camp of those defending this ridiculous practice.
Why can’t at booking time the letter M or F be placed so that this not be an issue? We fill out every form with those letters anyway! If someone spent upwatds of $1,000 for a seat to fly he ought be allowed at least that perogative if he so wishes. Although flight attendants generally do try to accommodate their desire it could all be avoided if the M/F lettet system were implemented at booking time. I flew for Succos and paid $2,100 for my ticket: don’t i have the
Oops!
don’t I have the right to make my flight comfortable and comfortable to my liking?
Certainly no big brouhaha should develop but should I not be allowed if that’s important to me?
Frankly the שנאה in the posts prior to mine seem rabid and ludicrous. Aside from a Huffington Post article having zero נאמנות the vitriolic comments listed here seem Palestinian in nature!
December 20th was a motzoei shabbos. It could easily have happened, and has happened in the past.
It’s interesting that this only seems to happen on flights between NY and EY. Do these people not fly anywhere else?
jew yorker,
thanks for the clarification however i know gh from her posts and any excuse to knock frum people will be jumped at, i dont know if this story took place, however if it did this must have been their first flight, because it doesnt seem too commmon
All those supporting the liberal antisemitic Puffing-com-Post rag must surely realize that this source of news is only slightly less believable than mikve-nayis. If this episode even occurred, it was probably one man, not many. The plane was delayed for other reasons for a half hour, as is very common. And he only refused to sit next to this particular woman- it was his wife, and she got on his nerves. All you geniuses need to get a life.
Everything else aside, I hope that everyone agrees that for a person to make anything but a polite request if placed in a similar situation would be halachically and ethically wrong, and any charaide/yeshivish yid who acts this way does not have his priorities straight.
For what it is worth, I recommend that ever commenter read an article posted on Huffington Post (on 12/30/14) about a former executive of Korean Airlines who delayed a Korean Airlines flight because her macadamia nuts were served in a bag, not on a plate. The former executive is the daughter of the chairman of the airline, and a South Korean court approved her arrest.
Lots of people forget that flying on a plane requires a lot of cooperation among passengers, flight crews, booking agents, and government regulators. And as it says in the Torah, “You cain’t always git what you want.”
And if commenter no. 5 is right about Rav Pam (even if he/she is wrong about spelling a heavier-than-air machine that flies), maybe the airlines should have a card printed with Rav Pam’s comment, including the proper citation, printed on a card that can be handed to frum passengers.