On Wednesday night, an Orthodox man boarded a United Airlines flight from JFK to San Francisco. Before the flight took off, he went to the back of plane to daven, probably Mincha (Maariv could have waited). The crew asked him to sit for takeoff, but since he was in the middle of the Amidah he couldn’t interrupt. His friends told the crew that he would be done in less than two minutes; he just couldn’t stop at that moment. However, once he was finished, the crew ordered guards to remove him from the plane. The link to the story can be found here.
I feel that everyone was wrong in this situation. A plane never leaves at its scheduled time, so they couldn’t wait another two minutes to finish davening? They still have to taxi for 10 minutes, wait for the planes in front of them to take off, and then they can leave. However, the guy couldn’t wait 10 minutes to start davening? If you’re in a car and you need to daven Mincha, Halacha says you can daven while seated. He couldn’t daven in his seat? Or before he got on the plane? This seems to be quite a Chilul Hashem (desecration of G-d’s name) here – now people might think that us Jews feel we can operation on our own schedules and disregard the rules that everyone else follows. I think he should have waited, interrupted and sat down, or davened in his seat to begin with. However, I know people disagree with me.
