A typical 10–12-hour flight to Eretz Yisrael is long enough to make any passenger impatient and fidgety. This past Sunday, passengers on El Al flight LY008 spent more than a full day—about 27 hours—traveling to Israel after the pilot was forced to make an emergency landing. Touching down at a military airport in Goose Bay, Canada, at approximately 4 a.m. EST, hours after taking off from JFK airport at around 1 a.m., passengers were told that the delay would not last more than two hours, and that an airline mechanic would help them get back into the air.
Unfortunately, that didn’t happen within the projected timeframe. Instead, another announcement informed the passengers that a mechanic would have to be flown in to repair the plane. After another five hours of waiting, passengers were told that they were going to be transferred to another aircraft being flown in from JFK. Two hours later, the replacement plane had arrived, but delays continued.
Transferring the passengers from one plane to another presented some issues, as the temperature outside was a frigid -14 degrees. With elderly passengers and young children on the flight, walking into the freezing temperatures was not advisable. For three hours, airline personnel made attempts to connect the planes. Eventually, El Al provided a bus to take the passengers from one plane to the next—a trip that took about 30 seconds. After a 12-hour delay in total, the second plane was up and running, and 24 hours after the initial landing in Goose Bay, the passengers arrived in Eretz Yisrael.
Among the passengers on the plane were students of Rabbi Willig’s 12th-grade shiur from DRS High School. Every year, during winter break, Rabbi Dovid Willig accompanies his talmidim on a trip to Eretz Yisrael, referred to as the “Yeshiva Trip.” The boys spend a week living and learning in the Mir Yeshiva, partaking in chesed missions, and visiting the various yeshivot they are interested in attending during their gap year.
Videos of Rabbi Willig’s shiur singing songs of bitachon and emunah to the other passengers circulated via social media throughout the day. Rabbi Willig offered words of chizuk and divrei Torah to those waiting patiently for the backup flight. Many men began learning and davening, and an impromptu daf yomi shiur was delivered.
One passenger told her father that after sitting on a delayed flight for 19 hours in Goose Bay, Canada, “It was a great opportunity to work on my patience.”
Also on the plane was the aron of Mrs. Mira Cohen Wein, a’h, wife of Rabbi Berel Wein, ybl’c, on the way to burial in Eretz Yisrael.