Which Passenger Has Superior Rights – Redux
In a case of déjà vu all over again, once more a group of ultra-orthodox Israeli men delayed a flight because they did not want to sit next to women. I wrote about this issue before but here we are again, the third time in the past few months. All of the flights in question serve the New York-Tel Aviv market but this was the first experience for Delta Air Lines.
In my last post about this, I said…
“On a U.S. airline, this type of behavior would never fly, so to speak.”
Well, it sure flew further than I thought it would. Kudos to the Delta flight attendants for their sensitivity but seriously, should they delay a flight – even for only 30 minutes in this case – because these men failed to either purchase an additional seat (which could have been empty) or worked together to purchase seats next to each other? Alternatively, why not offload them to a future flight where they could make arrangements for the type of seating they desire?
I strongly support religious freedom as much as anyone but c’mon, is this fair to the other 200+ passengers on the plane?
I saw this earlier and I definitely agree with you. This is not a new issue, and these men surely knew something like this was a possibility, so in my mind it’s on them to make arrangements to handle things (through some of the methods you suggested or others)
As a Jew (albeit a non-practicing one), I think ultra-Orthodox who pull this stuff are nothing more than arrogant bigots. It’s utterly appalling of them to ask others to bend to their preferences. They should be banned from DL until they realize that it’s the 21st century.