On Saturday, March 8, 2014, Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 took off from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing at 12:42am local time. The captain’s final voice transmission was at 1:19am, telling Kuala Lumpur traffic control, “Good night. Malaysian three seven zero.”
The plane’s transponder was turned off, but Malaysian military radar tracked the plane as it veered significantly off course. The plane continued to ping satellites until 8:19am, but was never found, though some parts of the plane have washed up ashore in places like Reunion Island, off the coast of Madagascar.
Netflix ran a limited series on what happened to MH370 that I didn’t care for. It went way off into conspiracy theory land.
Green Dot Aviation produced this MH370 video on YouTube that also makes assumptions, but uses Occam’s razor by taking the simplest and most likely explanation for what happened to the plane and where it wound up. It’s well worth the watch.
At the time I shared the story about how a travel agent who is a DansDeals Forums member, helped stop Andy from taking the flight, saving his life.
Neither the travel agent nor the passenger wants to deal with the drama that comes with being associated with a story like this, which I can respect.
The media, from CNN to SkyNews to Israeli TV and more wanted to speak to them, but fearing further blowback about gloating about survival, they demurred.
After all, the post was controversial. Most of the negative comments came from people who misunderstood the point or felt it was too soon to discuss such a story while the plane was still missing. Fair enough.
It’s also a post that people reference most often when they bump into me, and tell me the difference the story made in their lives and their observance of Shabbos. It left a long-lasting impression on people and is still the most viewed post that I’ve written in over 19 years of blogging.
The story itself is 100% accurate, backed up by the original unedited email exchange with time stamps that I edited to respect their privacy.
MH370 is a tragic story. Nobody onboard deserved to die, and certainly not because the plane flew on Shabbos (the Jewish Sabbath). To say that G-d struck down the plane because of Shabbos is anathema to Judaism.
But the way I see it is that because a travel agent put his religious convictions and values over profit, Andy is alive and safe today. He is a successful businessperson and I look forward to hearing a TED talk from him one day that includes the story. Alas, he didn’t want to be interviewed for this article.
The Talmud says that he who saves one life is as if he saved the entire world. This particular article may focus on one life, but that doesn’t mean the disappearance of MH370 was any less of a tragedy.
On Saturday, March 25, 1911, Rose Goldstein was saved from the devastation of the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire thanks to observing Shabbos. G-d forbid to say that everyone else in that factory died because of Shabbos, but as her cousin Joe told her, “Rosie, don’t you see? Because you kept Sabbath, you are alive. Because of your Sabbath, you survived.”
We may not be able to save everyone, but one small action can help save one person.
In 1968, the Lubavitcher Rebbe convinced Ariel Sharon to postpone his trip back to Israel. His original El Al flight was then hijacked to Algiers by the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine.
The Rebbe was asked, why didn’t he stop the plane from flying altogether?
The Rebbe responded, “Do you really think I knew that they would hijack the plane? I didn’t know. But when Sharon came to see me, I had the sense he should not go. So I told him to stay.”
The ways of G-d are a mystery to human beings. All we can do is be the best we can, remain faithful to our beliefs, and maximize our potential to do good in the short time we’re given on Earth.
The saying goes, “More than the Jews have kept the Shabbos, the Shabbos has kept the Jews.”
We live in a society where we are all slaves to our digital devices, to the point that leaving your phone behind can feel like missing a limb. The knowledge that Shabbos is right around the corner keeps me going. From sundown Friday evening until when the stars come out on Saturday night, observant Jews around the world spend 25 hours in offline bliss. It’s a day spent praying to G-d and eating scrumptious meals with family and friends. It’s perfect.
Sure anyone can always disconnect, but there’s something awesome about the forced routine that can’t be properly explained to one who hasn’t experienced it.
But the saying goes much deeper than that in this story.
We rarely get to see a story like Andy’s with the digital trail left behind so neatly.
Here it is again, some 10 years later. You can click on the images to enlarge them.
On 01/13/14, Andy emailed his travel agent his desired itinerary:
The travel agent was an Orthodox Jew, who didn’t practice booking travel for Jews on Shabbos. Instead, he proposed the following business class itinerary, slightly altering the Kuala Lumpur-Beijing Malaysia Airlines flight 370 from Saturday to Friday:
Andy was fine with the price, but again requested the early Saturday morning flight from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing, which would become forever known as MH370:
The travel agent responded that he would not be able to book travel for him over the Sabbath, but that he was free to book that flight segment by himself:
Andy agreed with that and planned to book the flight by himself:
And the travel agent noted that if he changed his mind, to just let him know:
Shortly afterward, Andy did just that:
The travel agent recommended a place to get a nice kosher meal and booked him the originally proposed itinerary, flying on MH370 from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing on Friday early morning, instead of Saturday early morning.
Fast forward 2 months.
The travel agent was in Israel that week and read this shocking email once Shabbos is over. The email was sent after Shabbos, at 7:15pm Beijing time/1:15pm Israel time:
And the travel agent wrote back, equally in shock at the realization of Shabbos saving his client’s life:
Andy couldn’t argue with that:
Indeed, due to the travel agent putting conviction over profit and worrying about the religious observance of a fellow Jew, Andy was persuaded into taking Malaysia Airlines flight 370 exactly one day prior to the ill-fated flight he intended to take.
It’s not often we hear a story like this. It was more than a century since Rose was saved from the devastation of the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire thanks to observing Shabbos. But this time it was Andy’s turn.
Our prayers go out for all of the lives lost on Malaysia Airlines flight 370.
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31 Comments On "10 Years Since MH370: A Chilling And Awe-Inspiring Malaysia Air Flight 370 Story"
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This story didn’t go over so well last time you posted this 🙂
Btw theres a youtube channel “lemmino: that made a great documentary of MH 370 also
Time heals all wounds.
There are also the hundreds of lives saved on 9/11 because Jews went to slichos that day and didn’t make it to work on time.
Wow wow. I missed that TA story completely. Incredible
Yes, beautiful story.
Wonder how many started keeping shabbos after seeing such a beautiful chilling story.
Just reading it is kind of chilling.
Wow in a blink of eye 10 years have past.
I remember your write up like yesterday.
Time flies by too quickly.
Maybe so, but you’re the pilot!
The story of Lubavitcher Rebbe reminds me of a story I heard from Yossi Melamed A”H who actually took a ton of photos of the Rebbe (he sold the collection to JEM and the end of his life). He was a chusid of R’Avraham Yechiel Fish of Tel Aviv when he lived there. When he went to gezeigen zich (wish him goodbye) on Moetze Shabbos before an upcoming journey to the USA, he asked him which flight he’s going on. And he told him “you’re not going on that flight”. Long story short, Yossi did not make the flight, although he tried, and that flight had a bomb on it (I don’t recall the details now of which exact flight it was).
Thought this post would at least mention the MH370 orbs which made a big splash recently.
I agreed with the criticism leveled at you 10 years ago. It’s not just the intention but rather the optics. And your tone was one of joy while hundreds were dead. You seem to have grown. Similarly, shortly after October 7th, an Instagram post circulated of a BT man expressing similar sentiment –that he was alive because it was a chag, while his friends were murdered. It’s magil – in extremely poor taste, disgusting even. We should never express joy in the face of such tragedies.
I didn’t see the Instagram post you’re referring to so I can’t speak to that but is the world really so black and white in your worldview? Why can’t someone who experienced salvation from unspeakable tragedy express joy at being saved? Why does that diminish from the fact that a tragedy occurred? Everything is either good or bad? No nuance?
+1
The story is of course awesome and needs to be repeated often but imho the real Kiddush Hashem is your beautifully sensitive introduction to it. It is testimony to a Chabad chinuch and a chassid who lives it. Dan, yyasher koichacho or as they say in the vernacular, a gezunt oif dayn kop!
lets not forget all the shomer Shabbos settlements and individuals that were saved from the oct 7th massacre because they kept Shabbos.
Thank you for reposting. The story sent chills up my spine ten years ago, and to read the exchange again had the same affect. Ten yers ago, I was more innocent and never imagined people would take it the wrong way. I now see how people would misconstrue the story, but I stand by my original convictions.
Hashem runs the world in fantastic ways. Just because he saved one person because of Shabbos, doesn’t mean that he killed hundreds of others for the same reasons. We have to embrace the good while letting go of the bad.
I read the original post and cried then and I read it again now and cried again. Amazing!
Kol hakavod @Dan for posting it again and disregarding the hate.
It’s a beautiful story said in a very sensitive way. You are a terrific writer.
I have to disagree with one line you said. You wrote: “Nobody onboard deserved to die”. I disagree. God is perfect and just. If someone didn’t deserve to die, then they would not have died. Period. This does not mean that they necessarily died because they did something wrong. Perhaps they died to save others. Or perhaps they died because it was the best thing for them. Perhaps they were only supposed to live that long. There can be many reasons why a person dies, but God is ALWAYS fair and just!! (we just don’t always know or understand why…)
Thank you.
The line is referring to criticism from last time, where people read the story as saying all of the other passengers deserved to die, because they flew on Shabbos.
Of course the vast majority if not all the passengers were not Jewish, and they have no obligation to keep Shabbos.
It bears mentioning that the most likely scenario of what happened to that flight was an intentional act of terrorism by the Muslim pilot.
To quote an article about the disaster in the New Zealand Herald “A lifelong friend, also a 777 pilot, who did not want to be named for fear of the consequences, came to the reluctant conclusion that Captain Zaharie Ahmad Shah crashed the plane.”
Maybe. Terrorists usually like publicity tho so why didn’t any organization ever take credit? Kinda strange…
Seems like it was some weird murder/suicide plot with a desire for a mystery like Earhart and DB Cooper.
If it was Islamic terrorism, wouldn’t there be more clues for that? What was accomplished otherwise?
“Nobody onboard deserved to die, and certainly not because the plane flew on Shabbos (the Jewish Sabbath). To say that G-d struck down the plane because of Shabbos is anathema to Judaism”
i think your misinformed over here. The torah says clearly those who dont keep shab. are liable for the death penalty. unless you meant the non-jews?
Indeed.
I read you’re old post and there was nothing insensitive about it. It’s time we stopped apologising for not bending over backwords to placate the anti God crowd.
Agree!
Thank you for the Chizuk it would be nice to see more “hashgacho pratis” on this platform I am sure everyone has multiple stories although may not be that dramatic.
The hand of Hashem is everwere.
Insensitive to victims which includes religious observing at home to younger attendees of a music festival. Events of Oct 7th was also on Shabbos.
Beautiful story. Time flies so fast. Remember it like yesterday. Non Jews are obligated NOT to keep shabbos. Keeping shabbos is a sin for a non Jew. Anyways, an article like this especially right after, has to be posted as PENIMI for ANASH.
I heard personally from Reb gamliel rabinawitz from eretz yisroel. He said a story after the meron tragedy about a tzadik who was told that the man in the apt on bottom of him died. The man started dancing and the person asked why he is happy if someone died, and he said that the malach hamaves was in his building and hashem didn’t let him die so he is dancing. And he went to levayah after and was sad. The point was that anyone in meron that night that survived has to be happy that the malach hamaves was on a rampage and they were saved, but also you have to be sad that people died, it’s not a contradiction.
Zohar quoted in Thursday’s Tanya “Joy is lodged in one side of the heart, while sadness is lodged in the other side of the heart”