Women will never be forced to move — El Al
ISRAEL’S FLAG carrier El Al has formally pledged to stop forcing women to give up their seats if Strictly Orthodox passengers refuse to sit next to them.
The announcement by the airline, which follows years of complaints, came after an unprecedented boycott threat by one of the country’s largest high tech companies.
The issue was thrust into the spotlight last week after a flight from New York to Tel Aviv was delayed for an hour and a quarter because four Charedi passengers refused to sit next to women.
The flight was fully booked, meaning no alternative seats were available, and the crew had to convince other passengers to move for them.Such incidents had become frequent occurrences, but even a court ruling last year that moving a female passenger was illegal failed to solve the situation. On this occasion, however, there was a difference: Barak Eilam, chief executive of Nice Systems, announced his company would not “do business with companies that discriminate against race, gender or religion” and therefore the company’s employees would not fly on El Al “until they change their practice and actions discriminating women.”
El Al’s chief executive Gonen Usishkin originally tried to deny the report but, following the boycott threat, confirmedthat “for the removal of doubt, today I ordered that the procedures on this matter should be tightened, and in future any passenger who refuses to sit beside another passenger will immediately be removed from the flight.”
The company’s chief flight attendant issued clear guidelines to that effect, but El Al employees remained sceptical in private.
Removing a passenger pre-flight is a lengthy procedure that involves security personnel and tracking down the passenger’s luggage, as El Al’s policy is to never take off with luggage of someone not on board.
It remains to be seen whether the crew will indeed delay take-off by up to an hour to remove a passenger, or try to work around the concerns of its Strictly Orthodox passengers, who make up a large proportion of its clientele.