I'm just upset because once whatever mistakes were made on both sides, elal still came through in getting everyone accommodated at a great cost to them. I'm sure they could have found a loophole about landing on shabbos if they wanted to.
It's upsetting that there's zero hakaras hatov that there's one airline in the world that would divert a flight and pay for hundreds of hotel rooms and send a charter flight motzash.
The pilot lied to passengers. Took off without doing pre-departure safety checks. Took off with dozens of unruly passengers - standard procedure is to return to the gate with even *1* such passenger. El Al breached who knows how many safety regulations to get the plane to Athens before shabbos to *save* money, not lose money. They don't fly on Shabbos and made those accommodations out of necessity for their bottom line, not because of the goodness of their hearts.
But even if none of this were true, they then deliberately and strategically fabricated the violence to slander Hareidim knowing full well the media would fall for it - and guess what? It worked. In our circles, the truth is out. But speak to the average shmo who heard about this flight, they'll tell you religious fanatics abused the crew.
This last part is so insanely disgusting and vile I want to smash my head against the wall just thinking that any frum Jew would defend El Al's behavior in any way at all.
The hakaras hatov goes to Chabad of Athens, and of that there has been plenty. If they, like many other Chabad houses, wouldn't have had enough food for 150, what would shabbos have looked like?
Passengers also have been effusive praising induvidual El Al employees. But El Al as a whole? They can go screw themselves back to Gander.
