My husband and son took a New York-to-Milwaukee flight that was supposed to leave Friday at 11:29 am. The flight boarded after 4 pm and didn't leave the gate until 4:40, and half an hour later the pilot announced it would be another hour until takeoff. At that point a Jewish family, worried about violating the Sabbath  , asked to get off. Going back to the gate cost the plane its place in line for takeoff, and the flight was eventually cancelled. Was the airline right to grant that request? M. W, Norwalk, CONN. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Situations like that can bring out the worst in people. But despite the increasing resentment  of a plane full of people, the pilot tried to do the right thing. He went out of his way to satisfy one family's urgent need. He should not have done so. Passengers bought tickets in the belief that the airline's primary goal was to get them to their destination as close to the schedule as possible. Once they got on the plane and the doors are locked, it's not correct to announce that the rules have changed and that a personal (as opposed to medical) emergency --no matter how urgent -- might take precedence .  _ , since on a plane, even a slight delay can spread outward, from the people in the cabin to those meeting them to the passengers waiting to board the plane for the next leg of its journey and so on. It would also be true if the personal emergency were not religious -- if someone suddenly realized she'd made a professional mistake that might cost her millions, and she had to race back to the office to fix it. If a religious practice does nothing to harm others, then airlines should make a reasonable effort to accommodate it. Though that family has every right to observe the Sabbath, it has no right to enlist an airplane full of captive bystanders to help them do so. By boarding a flight on a Friday afternoon, the family knowingly risked running into trouble. The risk was theirs alone to bear. The author of the reply letter thinks that   _  .
It's right for the plane to turn back to the gate to save a passenger's treasure The Jewish family should give up observing the Sabbath after boarding The biggest problem of turning back is to bring trouble to the pilot The Jewish family had better avoid boarding on Friday afternoon