DRS students en route to Israel detoured to Canada

What was to be at most a 12-hour trek from John F. Kennedy International Airport in Queens to Ben Gurion Airport in Tel Aviv, Israel, became a nearly 27-hour test of endurance for passengers aboard an El Al flight, including Rabbi Dovid Willig and roughly 20 of his 12th grade students from the Davis Renov Stahler Yeshiva for Boys High School in Woodmere, according to school officials and multiple news reports.

The plane finally landed in Tel Aviv shortly before 10 a.m. local time, after a 12-hour delay in Goose Bay, Canada, necessitated by a fire in the landing gear. The boys from DRS were headed to the Mir Yeshiva, the largest yeshiva in the world and visiting yeshivas they may want to attend during their gap year between high school and college.

The flight departed from New York at 12:41 a.m., nearly an hour after the scheduled time of 11:50 p.m. Roughly five hours into the flight the pilot made an emergency landing at a military base in Goose Bay. The base does have some smaller commercial planes landing there, but not typically a 747.

The plane touched down at the base just shy of 6 a.m. EST. Goose Bay is located in the Newfoundland province, the easternmost province to the north of Quebec. Passengers were told the delay would be two hours, but a mechanic had to be flown in, and they were forced to wait until 3 p.m. EST for another plane to arrive from JFK to take them to their intended destination.

While waiting, passengers huddled under blankets waiting for buses to shuttle them to the new plane, as the temperature in Goose Bay was -14 ° Fahrenheit. While they were waiting Willig and the students lead the passengers in song and readings from the Torah, as everyone waited patiently for the second plane’s arrival.

At 7:24 EST, the passengers boarded the new plane and arrived in Tel Aviv at 9:41 a.m. local time, or 2:41 a.m. EST after an otherwise uneventful second flight.