Passengers were shocked to discover that Israel had been wiped off
the map by Britain’s BMI airline, which omitted the Jewish state from
its digital charts on flights from London to Tel Aviv.
Neither Jerusalem nor Tel Aviv itself, which is Israel’s largest city,
were shown on the airline’s in-flight map. However, the orientation of
Mecca, Islam’s holiest site, was displayed on screens as well as the
northern Israeli city of Haifa, written as “Khefa” — the city’s Arab
name under the British Mandate before the war of independance in 1948.
BMI insisted that the map had not been drawn with an anti-Israel or
political agenda in mind — rather the aircraft in question were
recently bought from a bankrupt charter company that largely flew to
Arab countries.
“For this reason the in-flight entertainment system in the two planes
was made to adapt to the passengers flying to and from those
destinations and therefore the map showed mainly places holy to Islam …
If BMI had any political agenda in order not to anger neighbouring
countries, it would not have invested so much in the Tel Aviv line,”
the airline said.
BMI recently reached an agreement with Israel’s Tourism Ministry to
launch daily flights between London Heathrow and Tel Aviv. For years,
it has operated routes to Muslim countries including Syria, Lebanon and
Iran. The two aircarft used to run the flights to Tel Aviv were
originally intended to arrive in those Arab countries, the airline
said, and therefore the map was tailored to show sites holy to Muslims.
Israeli passengers filed a complaint against the airline with Israel’s
Transportation Ministry. Yigal Palmor, an Israeli Foreign Ministry
spokesman, said: “By pretending not to go where they are actually going
BMI will end up going nowhere. By erasing their Israeli destination
from the map, they will risk being erased from the list of eligible
airlines for Israelis.”
There is little air traffic between Israel and its neighbours. Israelis
are not permitted to enter Syria or Lebanon, while flights to Jordan
and Egypt have decreased in recent years.
