Passengers on BMI flights to Tel Aviv were in uproar after Israel was wiped off the inflight map — which instead showed the plane heading for Mecca.
The airline denied that it had an anti-Israel agenda. BMI said that the plane had recently been bought from a bankrupt Muslim charter airline and the map had been adapted to show places holy to Islam. A statement announced: “If BMI has any political agenda not to anger neighbouring countries it would not have invested so much in the Tel Aviv line.”
But Gideon Sitterman of the Israeli transport ministry warned the airline to put the country back on the map. “We will not agree to a situation where they hide the existence of Israel but want to do business with Israel,” he said.