On Saturday, Oct. 7 – the day Hamas launched its brutal attack on Israel – travel advisors woke up to panicked texts and calls from their clients stranded in the country. No surprises here – they immediately sprang into action to come to the aid of the customers.
Here are just some of their stories.
Sharon Fake, executive director of Travel Experts, had two couples on the second leg of a back-to-back Tauck tour, which was scheduled to continue on to Jerusalem and conclude in Aman, Jordan on Oct. 18.
The original plan was for clients to travel from Haifa to Tel Aviv for flights out of the country. “My job was to get them back on their original tickets with British Airways (BA) out of Aman to Houston. Of course, I immediately looked at all the space and it was chock-a-block full – so that was a challenge,” Fake said.
“I had an incredibly compassionate, professional agent at BA who was phenomenal. The tickets that I had booked, because they were discounted business class, were going to be $7,000 more per person, but the BA agent worked miracles and managed to get it down to $1,000 per person.”
By the time Fake’s clients arrived in Tel Aviv, however, Jordan had closed the air space. “Plan B was that Jordan was allowing Americans with very specific appointments, which Tauck must have gotten, to cross the border by bus into Jordan – so that was the plan for Monday.
“Tauck had arranged for hotels in Tel Aviv – and thankfully the flights that I had scheduled for them were on Tuesday,” Fake said.
On Monday, Fake texted one of the clients while they were en route to Aman. “She was saying, ‘We’re on the bus and we’re crossing the bridge,’ and then, ‘No, we’re off the bus– border has been closed.’”
Fake then received a text saying, ‘We’re back on the bus and we’re trying again,’ and finally another that read, ‘We’re in Jordan.’
“It was a matter of luck and kindness working with all parties,” she said, adding that her clients flew from Aman to London and then back home to Houston.
In addition to praising the BA agent, Fake also gave high marks to Tauck for the superb way in which it dealt with the crisis. “Tauck is going to get kudos from everyone because they were an example of handling the situation the right way,” she said, adding that her clients said, “Tauck was exceptional in every way.”
Christy Koenemann, CTA, of Transco Travel, had a couple in Jerusalem on an Oceania land program. “They were supposed to embark on the Nautica on Oct. 6, but I got a call from them on Oct. 5 [saying] that one of them had tested positive for COVID,” she said. “I had been working with Oceania about what would happen with them. The main answer I got was that they could quarantine for five days and then would be able to board the boat in the next port,” which was Haifa.
“Meanwhile, I woke up to multiple texts on Oct 7 from my clients with updates that air raid sirens were going off and that they were frightened,” Koenemann said.
In an effort to help her clients get to Haifa to join Nautica, she emailed the ship’s chief purser who contacted the onboard doctor who said that guests could not board if they tested positive within 10 days of embarkation.
Koenemann then switched her focus to getting her customers out of Israel. “The clients had booked their flights through Oceania so we were trying to work with them to rebook them,” she said. “The problem was there were very few options to get them out of the country. Oceania would find something and within minutes the flight would be sold out or canceled.”
She continued to look for flights, which proved to be exceedingly challenging. “Finally, on Oct 8 I found a flight on Turkish Airlines from Tel Aviv to Istanbul on Oct. 9 and was able to book it. For the next 24 hours I was just hoping that it wouldn’t get canceled,” Koenemann said.
“It was the best news when I woke up on Monday morning with a picture of my clients safe in Istanbul,” Koenemann said, noting that they flew Istanbul-Munich-Houston to their final destination of St. Louis.
“After escorting 62 people on a Windstar cruise from Greece to Turkey – with a five-day pre- and five-day post-trip – four of us went to Petra, Jordan, and two of the women in our group went to Israel,” said Betty Morgan of AMT Travel.
“They booked their own air. When the conflict started, they could not get any response from any airline. I had my office work on getting them at least a flight to somewhere, but there were no flights.”
Finally, AMT’s air department found two seats: one in coach and another in business to Athens on Oct. 9. “We arranged for them to stay at the Sofitel Athens Airport hotel, which they were thrilled about as it was so close,” Morgan said. “Their flight home was at 7 a.m. on Oct. 11.”
Although Cali Stein with Four Hundred did not have any clients in Israel when the conflict broke out, she nonetheless has come aid of “countless friends, friends of family, friends and total strangers,” she said. “Just to be clear, this is all volunteer work and nobody is profiting from any of it.”
“European carriers had suspended operations and were canceling flights left and right on Sunday when I was trying to help people get commercial flights,” Stein said. “Now, as I’m working with private charters, I haven’t seen any cancellations yet but there are just security risks.”
“Travel advisors are privy to real-time updates from airlines, but we also have connections with private jets and charter companies who release information to us and not necessarily the general public,” Stein said.
“We understand what’s needed to get on flights in terms of passport and visa information, and when people are panicking we are often the voice of calm and reason.”
As Koenemann put it, “I can’t imagine the people that are over who didn’t use a travel agent and don’t have a point of contact to help them get out.”
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