Hi,
You probably met one or two Israeli combina while you were visiting Israel. This our way of things to get around problems we have. It can be a smart solution to trick the system and its set of rules or something done very badly.
I am now, literally, on one of those Israeli combina – a Sundor flight that takes me to the ski vacation I am scared of. See, Sundor is the low cost airline belong to El Al. Until here everything is easy and clear – an airline and her low cost brand.
El Al is Israel national Airline. Because Israel is a Jewish state, El Al cannot fly in Sabbath. You cannot work in Sabbath according to Judisam religion rules. This includes among other things – to activate electrical equipment (TV, computers, cellphone etc), drive a car, fly an airplane, cook and many other restrictions. There are 39 prohibited categories of work a Jews do on this holy day, each includes many other subcategories.
So how come we fly in Sabbath with all the above? Because the flight is under Arkia, the second airline in Israel. This way we can fly on a El Al plane, and Sandur workers without causing a political crisis.
There were at least two Israeli government that fell due to issues of keeping the Sabbath during the years, one of them was because planes (jet fighter) that flew on Sabbath.
The word, by the way, is an Hebrew version of the term Velikij Kombinator from russian which probably refer to combinatorical mathematics. In Russian it is the name of Ostap Bender in the book The Twelve Chairs, by Ilya IlIlf And Yevgeni Petrov.
Take Care
Gad
El Al airplane in which we flew, under Arkia flight under Sundor flight
Sundor logo on the seats of the flight