[Avodah] Flight or Fight

[Zev Sero]

On 25/09/2011 6:25 PM, Prof. Levine wrote:
> Personally, I feel that this family had no business boarding a flight
> after 4 on a Friday afternoon.  Indeed, is one allowed to board a plane
> this close to the onset of Shabbos according to halacha?

Doesn't that depend on when Shabbos starts?  You don't know what time
of year it was.  Candlelighting in Milwaukee in midsummer is at 9:17
NY time, so if the plane will take off before 6 you will still make it.
At 4, this is still a reasonable prospect.  At 4:40, it's getting iffy,
but still a judgment call. When at 5:10 the pilot announced that they
would take off in an hour, that's when the alarm bells would have started
ringing.  An actual hard 6:10 takeoff is probably still doable, depending
on how far you have to travel from the airport, but of course there's no
guarantee that 6:10 won't become 6:30 or 7:00, and then you're in trouble.


> And then I have to wonder once they decided to board after 4 PM and were
> on if they. were allowed to insist that the plane turn around given the
> obvious Chillul Shabbos that insisting the plane turn around generated?

Chilul Shabbos?!

Assuming you meant chilul Hashem, first of all on the contrary it's a
kiddush Hashem that the world should see how important Shabbos is.
Second, they were in no position to *insist* on anything; they requested,
and the pilot agreed.  Presumably the pilot didn't know what would
result.  Why is that their fault?

Third, you can be sure that if the pilot or one of the crew was coming
up on their rest period that's in their contract and the FAA rules, they
would have turned around no matter how much it inconvenienced the
passengers; even though it would surely be perfectly safe to have them
run half an hour or an hour over their legal hours, they would never
dream of infringing on the holy regulations by even kechut hasa'arah.
If that means everybody spends the night in NY, then so be it.  How then
should HKBH's regulations get less respect?

Also note that the "ethicist" thinks it would be perfectly reasonable
to turn the plane around if someone had a medical emergency.  Why is
one person's medical emergency more important than another person's
Shabbos emergency?



-- 
Zev Sero        If they use these guns against us once, at that moment
zev at sero.name   the Oslo Accord will be annulled and the IDF will
                 return to all the places that have been given to them.
		                            - Yitzchak Rabin