While at the King David Lounge in JFK, we learned that the flight would be delayed about an hour. We were told that there was an ill passenger on the inbound flight and the delay was due to dealing with that. Not too bad, we thought, an extra hour in the lounge was no big deal. We were even assured that the jet, an El Al Boeing 747, would likely make up most of the time.
While most premium class lounges have alcoholic beverages, soft drinks, coffee, tea, and snacks, it takes El Al to serve classic parve kiddush food in the lounge. Tuna salad, hummus, salad, breads, spreads, and some soup were the highlights. Coffee came out of a fancy machine with lots of button choices for espresso, latte, cappuccino, etc. My biggest complaint was that all the good coffee choices were caffeinated. For decaf you got instant. I'm no fan of instant coffee, but if you are going to board a jet for an overnight flight I'm not going to start off caffeinated! Combining 2 packets of decaf coffee mixed into the premium hot chocolate from the machine was the best I could do. We avoided most of the snacks in the lounge thinking that a good premium class dinner was only a few hours away. That turned out to be a mistake.
We did board about an hour late. It was the usual zoo at the gate; El Al special security, no special business class boarding line, lots of babies and children, lots of strollers, "black hats" with big hat boxes, pushing, shoving, too much carry-on luggage, etc. I was comfortable and unsurprised, but there were a group of clearly mid-western Christian tourists who were more than a bit put off by the zealousness of the Jews hurrying to their seats to Israel. Religious fervor, no doubt :) .
There was a long delay in the Jetway for some reason or another but we had the good fortune of spending our time adjacent to a security officer with a sniffer dog. The dog was exceedingly well behaved and quite tolerant of the little kids who were captured by this. I don't know if the dog was looking for drugs, bombs, or treif, but it didn't do anything exciting during the 15 minutes we stood in its vicinity. Naturally, there was no explanation for the delay in the Jetway.
We took our seats in the lower level business class section a few rows behind the first class bulkhead. We had a good view of the kitchen on our right and two nice windows on our left. Clearly, this El Al 747 was in need of a face lift. It looked worn, there was duck tape on the legs of the seat in front of us, the surfaces were a bit grimy.
As we settled in, played with our seat buttons, and got generally comfortable we noted a large cardboard box being loaded into the belly of the plane. It was a coffin; another Jew was returning to the homeland, if only for burial. Presumably, the shomer and family was somewhere aboard as well, though there were plenty of regular passengers prepared to recite psalms throughout the flight.
The El Al flight attendants took good care of us. Plenty of water, offers of refills, and even some pleasant, chatty conversation. We were soon buckled in, buttoned up, gate retracted, and some bumpy maneuvering as the tractor began to push us back from the gate.
All this long while, at least since our landing in NY, it was snowing steadily and presumably, some of the snow was mixed with sleet. It was well below freezing outside and evidently, the tarmac was slipperier than it looked. We spent the next 90 minutes trying to be pushed back far enough to start the engines and proceed. It didn't work. A snowplow was called in, and finally another tractor. Evidently we were in a slight depression and we would be pushed for a few feet and the plane would slide back. We were assured this was not "dangerous" but the flight attendant how checked on us repeatedly owned up to the fact that he had never been on a plane with this particular situation and had never heard it being discussed. Eventually we were able to turn, start the engines, and then spend about an hour deicing and taxiing to the runway. It took so long that I thought we were on the grand tour of Jamaica Bay!
We took off, finally, four hours late and, according to the in-flight map, we headed northeast along the Atlantic Coast, crossed Cape Cod, Nova Scotia, Newfoundland, Labrador, Greenland, Iceland, Ireland, England, France, Switzerland, Italy, Croatia, Bosnia, Montenegro, Albania, Greece, along the Turkish coast and into Israel.
The seats were roomy and comfortable. They flattened out to almost a bed and I slept a while. The in-flight entertainment was deficient; I didn't care for any of the movie choices, but then again, I don't like most movies.
Food and beverage service was professional. Glenn Morangie was my single-malt Scots Whiskey of choice. The first course salad, fish, appetizer was tasty. The main entree was mediocre. It certainly didn't benefit from the 4 hour delay but I'm not sure it would have been more edible even if it was right on time. El Al has good fresh bread and rolls. Dessert included lots of fresh fruit. With enough of the Glenn Morangie, I was feeling no pain and drifted off to sleep.
I awoke once during the night and peered out the window and thought I saw Paris. I awoke again later and had mostly clear views of the Adriatic coast.
Breakfast was served with good fish, good coffee, and a lousy omelet. Finally, we were asked to prepare for landing and saw the Israeli coast, crossed Tel Aviv and landed at Ben Gurion airport.
Once you deplane at Ben Gurion your trip has only started. It is a VERY long walk through the modern terminal to the baggage claim area. El Al was cognizant of our delay and put out a spread of juice, water, and cookies at the baggage carousel. That was unusual and a nice apology.
Baggage was not long in coming and we began the rest of our trek through
Immigration/Passport Control and a cursory glance in our direction at Customs. We finally emerged in the Arrivals area where we were met by a joyous Zachary who was clearly delighted to see his Mother, and perhaps me as well. After all, we were only 3 hours late!
Zachary said he was not aware the flight was going to be late, so he arrived early to on time and had a lot of time to kill at the airport. He had taken the bus from Jerusalem to Ben Gurion, but didn't know there was a shuttle bus for the 2-3 kilometer walk from the bus stop to the terminal.
We took a sherut (shared taxi van) from the Airport to Jerusalem. There was a lengthy traffic delay on the highway near Bet Shemesh but this was not unexpected. The driver decided it was too much trouble to go down Agron Street because there was no place to turn before Jaffa Road so he let us out across the street on King George street. Zachary had shekels and paid the fare, I don't know if he tipped for this special service. With Zachary's help we shlepped all the luggage, checked in at the hostel.
We took some time to unpack, give Zachary all the things we brought for him, visited his room, met his madrich (staff) and then went out for a walk. It was dark and chilly so we bundled up. We walked down to Ben Yehuda Street by cutting through Independence Park, stopped at the bank to get Shekels from the cash machine, and found a Schwarma shop for dinner. It was mediocre Schwarma; but it was a place we could sit down which was important as we were stiff from all the sitting and hadn't gotten used to the walking.
We then walked up Ben Yehuda street to King George Street and back to Agron to the hostel. We tried to go to sleep to get our bodies onto Israel time but it was challenging and we didn't sleep well until quite close to morning. But that, as they say, will have to wait for the next post.
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