Most passengers would be angry to hear that their flight was turning around for one passenger, but not those on a New York-bound El Al flight. The flight returned to the airport after it took off to pick up an 11-year-old girl with cancer, whose passport had been misplaced.
Inbar Chomsky of Rehovot was on her way to Camp Simcha - Chai Lifeline's summer camp program for pediatric cancer patients on August 7 with a group of 40 people. Chomsky had gone through medical examinations and was ready for the flight, but when she boarded, she realized that her passport was missing, Haaretz reports.
The camp staff notified the flight crew and the flight attendants, ground control, and fellow passengers started searching for the passport for over half an hour. However none of them could find the passport and the captain said Inbar would not be able to fly. The girl was escorted off the plane and back to the gate while crying.
"Everyone was in shock, no one knew what to do," Elad Maimon, the program coordinator of Chayenu, the Israeli branch of Chai Lifeline told Haaretz.
"Taking a little girl off a flight is unheard of, and especially when that girl is sick and has already endured enough hardship. The airline personnel had tears in their eyes. They approached Inbar in the terminal. They bought her water, cried with her."
However a few minutes after the plane left the gate, one of the campers found the passport in another girl's backpack. They told the flight attendants and as a result, the pilot stopped the plane before taking off, consulted with air control and went back to the gate to get the girl.
Maimon said that the airline staff was shocked to see the plane return."The flight attendants could not believe their eyes," he said. "They told me they had never seen such a thing."
"Planes rarely return to the gate after departing," wrote the El Al spokesperson in an official statement. "The plane was on its way to the runway, when the passport was found on the plane. After consulting with El Al crew on the plane and El Al staff at the airport the decision was made and the plane returned to pick up Inbar. El Al was honored and proud to help Inbar's dream to go to the camp in the USA come true. We wish Inbar full recovery and health."
Inbar and the other campers arrived at the camp without further issue.
This article is copyrighted by Travelers Today, the travel news leader
