Why Delta, U.S. Airways cancelled flights to Israel

Delta Air Lines cancelled all flights to Israel, citing reports that a Hamas-fired rocket landed near Tel Aviv's Ben Gurion Airport.

Delta Air Lines is canceling all flights to Israel until further notice, citing reports that a rocket landed near Tel Aviv's Ben Gurion Airport.

A Delta Boeing 747 from New York was flying over the Mediterranean headed for Tel Aviv on Tuesday when it turned around and flew to Paris instead. Flight 468 had 273 passengers and 17 crew on board.

US Airways, which has one daily flight from Philadelphia, canceled that flight Tuesday and the return trip from Tel Aviv. United Airlines, which has two flights daily to Israel out of Newark, N.J., did comment immediately on the status of those flights.

Airlines and passengers are growing more anxious about safety since last week, when a Malaysia Airlines jet was shot down over Ukraine, killing all 298 people on board.

But as The Christian Science Monitor reported after the MH17 crash, "it is not uncommon for commercial civilian airliners to fly over restive, war-torn regions, including those in Afghanistan, Iraq, and other parts of the world, experts say. And Flight 17 was flying in a well-traversed route.

“This was a very commonly used route and passenger jets fly at high altitudes over many of the world's hotspots all the time," said Norman Shanks, an aviation security expert at Coventry University in the UK. “They chose the most direct and economic flight route possible, which keeps their fuel costs down and is something we expect as customers. They were no different from any other international airline.”

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