Other Middle East and Africa Frequent Flyer Programs - El Al Pilots To Avoid Flying Over Cemetery

El Al Pilots To Avoid Flying Over Cemetery

The Israeli government has promised leading rabbis and ultra-Orthodox politicians that El Al planes will avoid flying over a Jewish cemetery to avoid desecrating it.

The pledge follows the revelation that flights for New York sometimes fly over the cemetery after taking off from Ben Gurion Airport.

Under Jewish law, descendents of priests are forbidden to enter a cemetery and the ban is believed to extend all the way up to the heavens.

Some passengers had even asked to be wrapped in plastic body bags to protect the cemetery at Holon, south of Tel Aviv, after an El Al pilot told his rabbi that planes occasionally fly over it.

Some ultra-Orthodox Jews who are descendants of the priests, or Cohanim, began flying via Amman, or the Netherlands, because those flights do not pass over the cemetery.

Airports Authority spokesman Pini Schiff said the authorized flight path passes just south of the cemetery, but he cannot guarantee that pilots never cut corners.

http://news.airwise.com/stories/2002/01/1009994665.html

Its truly an honor to reply to the travel maven:

Actually, on El AL planes they sometimes carry bodies enroute to burial in Israel and they have made modifications that permit Kohanim to fly on the plane, for their the modifications that they made are acceptable that they are not under the same roof.

Actually I read this week that ElAl has admitted to flying over the cemetary by Cholon and has agreed to modify it's flight plans

You are correct. My grandmother included! Amsterdam to TLV.