MIAMI INTERNATIONAL AIRPORT, FLA. (WSVN) - Travelers from Israel who landed safely in South Florida after the country closed its airspace prior to the attacks from Iran opened up about their strange and frightening ordeal.
This group of people were the last to fly out of Israel before hundreds of drones and missiles launched toward its territory, early Sunday morning.
“It felt a little bit like getting the last chopper out of ‘Nam,” said traveler Julie Simonson.
Traveler Tony Raz said they departed in the nick of time.
“It was pretty scary when they said that they’d already released some of these mini-planes with bombs on them, and they were saying they were going to close the skies at 12:30 at night, 12:30 a.m. Our flight was scheduled to take off at 12:15,” he said. “We got on the plane, and it was maybe 10 minutes behind schedule. The skies were closed, but they let us get out.”
Their plane landing safely at Miami International Airport several hours later.
Some passengers told 7News they were still shaken up.
“I was scared, I start to cry,” said traveler Taly Raz. “I didn’t know if I’m going to see my kids, if we were going be flying, if we were going to get bombed while we were on the airplane.”
Many didn’t know whether they would take off or have to seek shelter at the airport.
“Just the whole plane was, like, really intense, people trying to figure out what’s going on,” said traveler Aryeh Levine. “It was a really surreal situation.”
Passengers watched everything unfold on their phone screens.
“We were on the plane, and everyone was connected to the Wi-Fi, so you could see it was like a fireworks display in the sky, just rockets coming in, and the iron dome intercepting all the rockets,” said Levine.
Maor Elbaz-Starinsky, the Consulate General of Israel on Miami, spoke about the attacks hours later.
“Iran should be held accountable for everything that they’ve been doing, for whatever they’ve done last night, and we know what they’ve done last night,” he said. “Iran will carry the consequences of such attack.”
Those on board the plane that landed at MIA hope this conflict doesn’t escalate into something worse.
“We want peace. We want everybody to be OK and healthy, and we don’t want to be attacked,” said Simonson.
Another flight from Tel Aviv is expected to land at MIA on Monday morning.
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