Air France ‘deeply regrets’ leaving Israel off the map

Air France have apologised for ‘leaving Israel off the map’ after passengers travelling between New York and Paris noticed the omission, despite Israel’s neighbours being listed along with the Palestinian territories.

Jewish groups cried foul when they learned that the in-flight map, which also shows major cities, indicated the West Bank and Gaza but not Israel.

Shimon Samuels from the Simon Wiesenthal Center said that Israel and Tel Aviv were “glaringly absent” and asked “whether Air France has succumbed to the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions campaign to delegitimise the Jewish State by literally wiping it off the map”.

A spokeswoman for Air France issued an apology, saying that the company “deeply regrets this incident, due to a map scale and display problem which is currently being resolved.”

This is not the first time an airline has failed to show Israel on in-flight maps, with a similar incident reported in 2009 involving British Midland International Airlines, a subset of British Airways.