Delta flight from JFK ends with emergency landing in Tel Aviv

The airline has a history of using older aircraft on long-haul routes

A Delta Airlines flight from New York’s JFK to Tel Aviv may have gotten off to a smooth start but finished with a rocky one by making an emergency landing at Israel’s Ben-Gurion International Airport this morning, Israeli media are reporting. No injuries were reported, but high anxiety on the part of whatever passengers were on board (most USA-Israel travel is still banned) can safely be assumed.

It’s likely that the aircraft concerned is an Airbus A330-900neo, which while not old equipment is certainly no fresh piece of aviation meat either. Airbus’s shining star these days is the A350, whereas the A330-900neos are simply more fuel-efficient models of an older aircraft type for which orders started back in 2014.

This column reminds readers that another Delta Airbus A330 plane had to make an emergency landing over the summer, in Athens, terrifying passengers.

Delta’s proclivity for holding onto aging aircraft is well-known in the industry—whereas El Al Israel airlines now wisely flies exclusively Boeing’s 787 Dreamliners between its North American destinations and Israel.

This spate of incidents strikes me as a predictable but still distressing parsimoniousness because it flirts with documented hazard, and it’s certainly not mitigated by Delta’s corporate obfuscation on the issue. My recommendation is to stick with Delta for domestic American travel, even if some of its in-flight crew members seem unable or incapable of preventing passengers from spitting on you.

This is a developing story…