Jerusalem - Two Charedi businessman from Israel are planning to express their thanks publicly tomorrow during their morning prayers after an unexpected delay caused them to postpone their trip to Nairobi on the doomed Ethiopian Airlines flight that crashed earlier today, ultimately saving their lives.

B’Chadrei Charedim (http://bit.ly/2SWLpoC ) reported that Yisroel Moseson and Shraga Yisrael were planning to fly to Addis Ababa on Saturday night, continuing on to Nairobi on Ethiopian Airline’s Flight 302 on Sunday morning.  Unanticipated problems that arose on Thursday had them rescheduling their trip to Monday night.  Moseson told Walla! News (http://bit.ly/2SXXfi6) that the issue that had originally frustrated the two ended up being their salvation.

“Only because of this am I able to speak with you now,” said Moseson, a Gerrer chosid.  “I was in the middle of a meeting this morning when I got word of the plane crash on African soil and after a few seconds I realized that I should have been on that flight.”

Moseson said that he feels that the merits generated by recently collected charitable contributions in the Gerrer community saved his life.  The two men often fly Ethiopian Airlines for business and plan on completing their journey to Nairobi through Addis Ababa with the airline.

Passengers who flew on the doomed jetliner late last week said that they had experienced problems on Thursday night on a flight that carried 180 Israeli passengers from Tel Aviv to Addis Ababa, with cabin temperatures rising to extremely uncomfortable levels. 

Passenger Chanan Goder, who does business in the southern region of the Sudan, said that had the plane crash occurred a few days earlier on the Thursday night flight that he had taken, it could have been a national disaster for Israel.

As previously reported on VIN News (http://bit.ly/2SSfIN6), two Israelis were among the 157 people who died when Flight 302 crashed this morning outside Addis Ababa.

Representatives of Zaka International have been making their way to the crash site and have been in contact with the Israeli consulate in Addis Ababa and Rabbi Eliyahu Chaviv, the Chabad emissary to Ethiopia.

“Our members will be doing everything that they can to recover the Israeli victims and bring them to a proper Jewish burial,” said Yehuda Meshi-Zahav, found and chairman of Zaka International.  “Unfortunately, we have a lot of experience with disasters of this nature.”