As we were checking our luggage at Los Angeles International Airport, the airport received a bomb threat. It was five days after the bombing of Pan Am Flight 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland. The entire Tom Bradley Terminal was emptied. We spent two hours curbside.
The all-clear finally came, and we took off three hours late. We had a brief stopover for fuel in Amsterdam, then headed for Ben-Gurion Airport just outside Tel Aviv. We arrived in the evening. We’d been scheduled for an 8 p.m. welcome dinner at our Tel Aviv hotel. As it turned out, the kitchen and dining room staff had to be held over so that we could be fed at 11 p.m.
I remember thinking that because of the actions of some knucklehead in Los Angeles — 10 time zones away — the lives of a dozen hotel staffers had been affected. They were delayed by three hours in going home to their families.
