A flight of the Israeli airline EL AL departed from Warsaw and headed to Tel-Aviv was forced to make an emergency landing at Antalya airport, in Türkiyeto evacuate a passenger in need of medical attention.
After having entrusted to Turkish doctors a woman who had probably had a heart attackas per established practice in these cases the commander asked for the refueling to be sufficient to reach the destination, but the workers at the Turkish airport refused despite the landing was an emergency.
It should also be noted that the passengers, again against all rules, had been forbidden to disembark and to add to the difficulties the plane had been parked in a spot in full sun.
The Turkish workers, certainly on the instructions of the management, refused to supply the people on board with fuel as well as waterfall drinking And foodnone of this was made available to the crew to be distributed among the people on board the aircraft.
This situation, however ignored by almost all of the international press despite the fact being extremely serious in itself, came to light only after the publication of a note by the airline.
Israeli media reported that the Foreign Ministry had received assurances from Turkish authorities that the plane would be allowed to refuel, but the process was taking a long time and the plane was meanwhile burning fuel on the runway to keep the air conditioning and other systems running.
At that point, and after having contacted the Greek authorities, the flight commander decided, before the fuel reserve in the tanks made it no longer possible, to take off for Rhodesa 40-minute flight away, and refuel at the island’s airport.
According to a Turkish diplomatic source, the fuel was to be supplied to the plane for humanitarian reasons and the procedure was about to be completed, it was the Israeli captain who decided to take off on his own initiative.
This explanation is not only pathetic but also ridiculous.
It was obvious that the Turkish government he was doing everything he could to keep the plane grounded and create a new diplomatic incident.
It cannot be ruled out that both the people on board and the crew would have been detained, under false pretenses, by the Turkish authorities.
It should also be noted that according to reliable sources the control tower did not provide assistance during take-off and that the pilots were forced to leave the ground relying only on the aircraft’s instrument data.
We will know if these rumours are true only if the company Israeli will file a complaint with the international air safety control bodies, making available the plane’s black boxes which continued to record even on the ground because, it is worth remembering, the engines remained on during the entire stopover period.
It is the first time ever in the history of civil aviation that it has been denied ground assistance to a flight that landed due to an emergency.
What happened in this case is yet another proof of the true face of those who until a few years ago were insistently asking to join the European Union.
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