NEWPORT NEWS -- It's not just travelers that are upset with
PEOPLExpress airlines. Newport News Mayor Mckinley Price says he's also
disappointed.
The airline has cancelled flights until October 16 because of issues with planes. The low-cost airline was flying two airplanes.
PEOPLExpress received grants from the city to start service.
"The city is due a refund," said Price.
Read more here: http://www.13newsnow.com
PEOPLExpress launch costs taxpayers $1.65M
Israel’s national airline, El Al, has been criticised for allowing
ultra-orthodox Jewish men to disrupt flights by refusing to be seated
next to women.
A petition on change.org is demanding that the carrier “stop the bullying, intimidation and discrimination against women on your flights”.
One flight last week, from New York’s JFK airport to Tel Aviv’s Ben Gurion airport, descended into chaos according to passengers, after a large group of haredim, or ultra-orthodox Jews, refused to take their seats next to women, in accordance with strict religious customs.
The episode has prompted other women to come forward with similar stories on international flights to and from Tel Aviv.
Amit Ben-Natan, a passenger on last week’s El Al flight from New
York, said take-off was delayed after numerous and repeated requests by
ultra-orthodox men for female passengers to be moved.
“People stood in the aisles and refused to go forward,” she told the Ynet website.
“Although everyone had tickets with seat numbers that they purchased in
advance, they asked us to trade seats with them, and even offered to
pay money, since they cannot sit next to a woman. It was obvious that
the plane won’t take off as long as they keep standing in the aisles.”
Another passenger on the flight, named only as Galit, said
ultra-orthodox passengers had suggested she and her husband sit
separately to accommodate their religious requirements. She refused, but
added: “I ended up sitting next to a haredi man who jumped out of his seat the moment we had finished taking off and proceeded to stand in the aisle.”
On a different flight, Elana Sztokman, executive director of the
Jewish Orthodox Feminist Alliance, refused to accede to a request to
move seats, triggering “frantic negotiations”, she said, between
ultra-orthodox men and airline staff.
“What happened to me on this flight isn’t that different from what
happens on almost every flight,” she told Voice of Israel radio. “You
get on a plane, and the plane is about to take off but a whole bunch of
ultra-orthodox men start playing around, moving around, whispering,
moving back and forth trying to find different seats … Anyone who’s ever
travelled on El Al has experienced this.”
Sharon Shapiro, from Chicago, the organiser of the online petition –
which had attracted about 1,000 backers by Tuesday morning – said it was
“not right that female passengers are being intimidated or harassed.
It’s one thing to ask nicely, but if someone says no, they should not be
put under pressure.”
There was a genuine dilemma for some ultra-orthodox Jews. “What most
people don’t understand is that it’s not personal”, but considered by
some to be a religious obligation.
Airlines should seek a way of accommodating the religious
requirements of passengers without breaching others’ civil rights, she
said. “I’m not quite sure why El Al asks passengers to sort these things
out among themselves. It would be better if people can get on a plane
knowing they’re sitting somewhere they feel comfortable. Otherwise, it
adds to tensions and misunderstandings between religious and secular
[passengers].”
The petition says: “If a passenger was being verbally or physically
abusive to airline staff, they would immediately be removed from the
plane … If a passenger was openly engaging in racial or religious
discrimination against another passenger or flight attendant, they would
immediately be removed from the plane. Why then, does El Al Airlines
allow gender discrimination against women?
“Why does El Al Airlines permit female passengers to be bullied,
harassed, and intimidated into switching seats which they rightfully
paid for and were assigned to by El Al Airlines?
“One person’s religious rights does not trump another person’s civil rights.”
It suggests that El Al reserves a few rows of segregated seating available in advance for a fee.
Among comments posted on change.org, Judith Margolis from Jerusalem
said: “The behaviour involving harassing women in the name of religious
observance is outrageous. That airlines allow some passengers to disrupt
flights is unacceptable.”
Myla Kaplan of Haifa said: “I no longer feel comfortable flying on El
Al due to the bullying and delays and general humiliation of being
asked to move out of a seat I reserved in advance.”
In a statement, El Al said it made “every effort possible to ensure a
passenger’s flight is as enjoyable as possible while doing our utmost
to maintain schedules and arrive safely at the destination.
“El Al is committed to responding to every complaint received and if
it is found that there are possibilities for improvement in the future,
those suggestions will be taken into consideration.”
Female passengers on other airlines flying to and from Israel, such
as British Airways and easyJet, have also been asked to move seats at
the request of ultra-orthodox men. Some airlines close toilets for
periods during flights to allow men to gather to pray.
The outcry over flights comes against a backdrop of moves by hardline ultra-orthodox communities
in Israel to impose dress codes on women, restrictions on where they
can sit on public buses, segregated checkout queues in supermarkets and
the removal of women’s images from advertising hoardings.
Sztokman – whose flight came at the end of a US speaking tour on her
new book, The War on Women in Israel: A Story of Religious
Radicalization and Women Fighting for Freedom – said such demands had
increased over the past decade.
“A lot of what we’re seeing today … is about the erasure of women’s
faces from the public sphere, the erasure of women’s names from
newspaper articles, the refusal to let women talk on radio stations
“It’s a whole array of practices of women’s exclusion and women’s degradation that has got much worse.”
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