Religious Passengers Stranded at Ben-Gurion Over Shabbat

Chadarei Chaderim reports: US Airways flight number 796 from Philadelphia, landed at 4:00 on Friday afternoon, instead of the expected 2:15 PM.

The doors to the plane only opened at the terminal at 5:20 PM, and passengers arrived at the passport control at 5:30.

Rav Yochanan Chayat, the El Al rabbi was called, and he in turn called Zaka for assistance.

Zaka had passport control open a special lane for religious passengers to rush them through.

And by the time Shabbat arrived, Zaka managed to bring around 100 mattresses to the airport, and collect enough food from a number of Bnei Brak stores for the passengers who were going to be stranded in the airport over Shabbat.

The only question is, who in their right mind willingly flies on a flight that will hopefully arrive only 3 hours before Shabbat, knowing that flights get delayed all the time?