Flight Hunter received an urgent call for help from a group of Israelis stuck in Kyiv. Their flight had been cancelled because of the air closure and they could find no way back. Direct flights, of course, were not operating in those days, and what followed became a rescue flight from Kyiv in several stages.
“Hi, we are stuck here in Kyiv. Almost 30 of us have gathered, all with cancelled flights, and we cannot manage to get back to Israel,” said Moshe, who was stranded with his sister and her husband, when he phoned. “We do not care how. Any way you can help, even through Jordan or Egypt, and I will walk back if I have to. The main thing is that we get home.”
How the rescue flight from Kyiv worked
Flight Hunter set out to extract the group from Kyiv, along with another family stranded in Turkey with no way of returning.
The site’s manager describes it: “We arranged a Covid test with fast results for everyone in Kyiv, and the group boarded a flight to Ankara in Turkey. There the stranded family joined them, and we arranged a flight to Jordan. At the airport in Jordan everyone was tested again. By a miracle they all came out negative and nobody was stuck in Jordan for two weeks. Outside the airport’s testing area, taxis from a Jordanian company that works with Flight Hunter were waiting, and from there they reached the Allenby border crossing. In coordination with the crossing, approval was obtained and the group entered Israel.”
“An exhausting journey that, thank God, ended safely. I do not want to think what would have happened if someone had tested positive in Jordan and been stuck there for two weeks in a government isolation facility.”
Good to know
The route home ran through a land crossing that many travellers never use. Our guides to the Allenby crossing (King Hussein Bridge) and the Jordan River crossing explain how they work.
