Takes quite a bit of courage to do this.
A young Lubavitcher woman most likely saved the lives of a plane full of people when she suspected a malfunction with the aircraft just moments before takeoff. Despite being mocked and ridiculed, her insistence lead to the plane being grounded after a serious malfunction was discovered.
The young woman, a member of the Crown Heights community, was scheduled to return from a trip to Israel, where she spent the holiday of Passover.
Her father, Rabbi Kalman Winefeld, related the story to CrownHeights.info:
“My daughter was scheduled to return to New York on Motzai Shabbos from Israel with a stopover in Moscow on Russian airline TransAero. She boarded her flight at Ben Gurion Airport and was seated at the window.
Moments before takeoff, she realized that something was not right with the wing and heard noises that she believed were not regular noises. She first brought this to the attention of the passengers seated beside her, who in turn laughed it off and said it was just noise from the engines.”
Not deterred, she persisted, unbuckling her seatbelt and standing up. The flight attendants, who themselves were already seated and buckled in, instructed her to return to her seat. When she told them her concerns about the plane they too laughed at her. She insisted that she will not fly on the plane if they didn’t check it out.”
After shouting and threatening her, airline officials finally relented and went to investigate her concern.
Only after three further hours did the airline finally admit the plane wouldn’t be fit to fly and switch the passengers to another one.
