A number of airlines demanded last week that the Israel Airports Authority (IAA) stop the “impurity of Kohanim” procedure. According to this procedure, if a plane landing at Ben-Gurion Airport is carrying in its cargo area a body flown in from abroad, its passengers can only get off the plane after the body is removed from the aircraft, even if it takes a long time.
This procedure was adopted by Ben-Gurion Airport following a request by the charedi community in order to prevent kohanim waiting inside the terminal from becoming tomei.
“The torture of passengers must end,” a source in the aviation industry said this past week.
About two weeks ago, Ynet claims, passengers of a Swiss International Airlines plane were forced to wait on the hot aircraft with no air conditions for about half an hour for the removal of a body located far from the cargo area’s entrance.
After the plane landed, its doors did not open and the air conditioning systems did not work. Some 200 passengers and crew members were left on the closed plane, and their protest was unanswered. Only after the meis was removed from the plane, 30 minutes after landing, a boarding bridge was connected to the aircraft and the angry passengers were allowed to get off.
“This country is doing everything possible to drive tourists away. All kinds of strange procedures are doing the job more than any security situation,” a source at Ben-Gurion Airport had said at the time.
Following the incident, airlines are demanding a permanent solution for the problem. “It’s unthinkable that passengers should be tortured because of an agreement between the IAA and rabbis,” said a source in the aviation industry. “They want a quiet front on the part of religious elements. That’s important, obviously – but the passengers are important too.”
{Ynet/Yair Alpert-Matzav.com Israel}
If in the time of the first Bayis, the Gov’t would have enforced all these Halachas, than every Third Posuk in Tenach would tell of a certain inconveniance, that was caused by being observant.
But we find nothing at all in Tenaach.
If the airlines doesn´t like this procedure why doesn´t they stop carring these bodies. Or keep the bodies within easy reach in the cargo aerea? On the other hand: A stop will probably make the rabbis hurry to find a loophole to drop their request of moving the meis first.
I don’t understand it’s the airlines themselves that are creating the problem.
Let them Either make an rule that the meis has to be placed right at the cargo door or unload passengers the old way with out ‘hooking up’ to the terminal. I see no reason why that still can’t be done since its still done in airports all over the world.