6 years ago there was a charter advertised going to Uman for Rosh Hashanah & subsequently to Israel for Sukkos.The project started by a Breslev person that meant good, and given that he wanted it should look legit, he partnered with a well known travel agency to sell the tickets.
Unfortunately they were scammed by a broker, and they didn't do due diligence verifying the legitimacy. It had telltale signs that something was off, first the type of aircraft etc, and the price they sold tickets also showed something is way off.
I'm not sure when they figured out that 1 plus 1 does not equal 3, but at a certain point they all knew it's צרות. Breslev people do whatever they could to get to Uman for RH (see Belarus 2020), & at a certain point they could have faced the fact and let 400+ people find alternative flights, but they waited (seriously hoping Moshiach will come that night) till
after that (while that day many agents were stuck with group seats that they couldn't sell) and pulled the plug with the excuse "landing permit etc."
I remember telling many people the week before that something is off, and the night before I asked someone that was booked on it "what's the flight number? what terminal? what's the departure time?" and all they could answer me was "I was told to be at JFK 12am, there will be a sign at the entrance to what terminal to go to". At that point I knew it's BS
And I thought lessons learned this won't happen again, but copy paste, it happened again
When we did a charter 2 years ago (yah it also didn't fly for obvious reasons), we were scared to even name it "charter", but luck had it given the circumstances before we even ran ads we were fully booked, and unfortunately it was cancelled, but our clients knew we were legit, there was an airline, with a flight number etc.
The following year BH we made it work great, but still had many people questioning "yah (Chasidish) charters never work out, always cancels at the last minute"
By every charter that we did, I prayed and hope not to get stuck c"v with a real "mechanical" issue, as the consequences would have been very bad, but even more the stigma, especially after this is used in such cases. And every delay we had was accompanied by complaints "Chasidish מעשות", and I try very hard to minimize, and learn from the mistakes, and even when it's out of my (or even the airlines) control, people still get the bad taste of "charters", and with a story like this it's not making the situation better.
In this case I saw a video someone asking one of the arrangers about this charter, and he said they have a private jet of about 220 seats and will fly non-stop, and in the article from
COLlive it said "The private charter flight has 2 cabins, with Elite Business class seating and Premium Economy seating", so started the quest to even find such a aircraft, without luck (the only thing that I found was a plan....). Not i'm not sure if they branded "Economy" as "Premium", but interesting nonetheless. In those cases around a week or 2 before the operator would have filed for a permit with the DOT, again noting. And the final sign was when I inquired with someone that was booked the same questions I asked 6 years ago "what's the flight number? what terminal? what's the departure time?", and got an almost similar answer "working on the paperwork, will update you as soon as we know". oh no. And Friday "Motzai Shabbos we will update" and Motzai became Sunday, and then a flight number (but not with a known airline code) and time was provided. But by Monday morning when I was looking for an inbound aircraft and it was invisible, I knew it was a matter of time till the balloon busts, to my surprise they first tried to play a "slight delay" game (I guess hoping for a miracle), and finally 4 hours before the said departure time they unplugged the life support with the
"due to an unforeseen mechanical, technical and emergent situation" excuse.
א חרפה און בושה - those who still wanted to make it had to scramble trying to find alternatives etc., and everyone hopes to get their $ back that they paid for - and most of them don't even know they were part of a scam - whoever was the scammer I don't know - but due diligence wasn't done - and trying to wait for a miracle and not calling it off when it was obvious.