More than a few passengers on board an El Al flight from Tel Aviv to NYC are fuming after their flight was turned around and most of them will only be able to fly on Thursday, 1 Tammuz 5775.
One passenger told Ladaat News “We were in the air for 12 hours. I had planned to arrive in New York for a bar mitzvah”. He added the passengers on the flight were divided into three flights, some leaving Wednesday night and two flights leaving on Thursday. “They did not ask anyone but simply decided who flies tonight and on Thursday” the passenger added.
It appears one of the plane’s engines were showing signs of a problem and rather than landing in London, the decision was made to return to Israel. Families with children explain the flight was a nightmare, with some missing other family simchas including weddings.
Despite it all, upon landing back in Ben-Gurion Airport many passengers began singing אין ייאוש כלל בעולם. They were taken to the terminal where they were served refreshments.
(YWN – Israel Desk, Jerusalem)
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12 Responses
1. Don’t make tight connections with airplanes (or most other forms of transportation).
2. Be happy you didn’t mess up the simcha by making some of the participants sit shiva.
This doesn’t make a lot of sense. If the danger was real why did the plane not land at the nearest airport? Why did they risk flying back to Tel Aviv? Yet another reason not to fly El Al apart from their diabolical in flight service. They operate a fleet of aging planes that frequently have mechanical issues. Why on earth should they think of the passengers’ convenience? The passengers are simply an inconvenience that they have to put up with in order to run the third world airline that El Al is.
ONE of the plane’s engines WERE showing?? Where did you learn your English? It should be WAS, not WERE.
So the passengers on this flight spent 12 hours on a plane to go from Tel Aviv to Tel Aviv, when they could have spent 6 hours on the flight to go from Tel Aviv to London? Who is running this airline? Hamas?
Nfgo3: guut gezuckt.
Avreimi: so what you’re saying is that El Al is the new Tower Air?
12 hours in flight? garbage reporting! they could have been in NY already
I have a friend who was on the flight. The plane was in the air for 6 hours, not 12. I don’t know who made up the number 12!
And to #2, I’ve gone back and forth on El Al many times, and have never experienced “diabolical service.”
That’s crazy! 12 hours in flight means they were more than halfway to their destination. Surely El Al didn’t want to pay money to another airline for using their maintenance services and wanted to return to HQ to fix the problem at home. Another example of big corporations exhibiting a lack of concern for their customers.
I was on that flight so no word of mouth here. We were on the flight for 12 hours. We were over the Atlantic passed London. They told us we were going to land in London in 2 hours because of safety issues. About 40 minutes outside of London they notified us that they changed thier minds and we were going back to israel!!! Big time chutzpah. Decision had nothing to do with safety but rather financial.
I am sure there’s more to the story. We don’t know who was on that plane and it could be that they couldn’t land in Europe because of security considerations.It doesn’t make sense that they turned back for financial considerations.
El Al is a business and, no different than any other airline, is perfectly justified in taking financial considerations into account. Once they determined that the plane could safely return to Eretz Yisroel, there was no reason for them to contribute perhaps $1,000,000 to their passengers.
Try and figure out what it would have cost them to have their plane stranded in London and their having to purchase 300 one-way LHR-JFK tickets and possibly hotel rooms for their passengers.
Why didn’t the passengers who were so eager to get to NY buy tickets on another airliner, once they got back to EY? Because they didn’t want to pay? Well, why is El Al any different?
Stop being motzi laz on your fellow yidden at El Al.
If they would have landed in London, it would have been worse for all the passengers. They would likely not have been allowed to leave the airport and would have had to remain in the terminal until a replacement plane was flown in. That could have been 2 days easily. Airlines these days don’t have extra planes sitting around.