El Al has announced that its several Passover flights will be staffed by smiling stewards - without stewardesses - to attract approximately 20,000 hareidi religious yeshiva students.
They begin their vacations at the beginning of the Hebrew month of Nissan, which this year coincides with March 26, two weeks before the Passover holiday begins.
The flights will be a pilot project and may be extended, and the planes also will not show any films, according to the hareidi religious website LeDaat.com.
Hareidi religious businessmen have been trying for years to arrange flights for the general haredidi religious community, and several discussions were held the past several months between El Al and community rabbis.
The flights will be classified as "mehadrin," the Hebrew word for very stringent views on kosher food and certain practices in Jewish laws and customs.
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All food will be "glatt kosher, "which follows more stringent supervision, and there will be compartments for passengers' matzo packages so they will not be stored in luggage areas where they often get crushed.
El Al also is weighing the possibility of adding special mehadrin sections to regular flights to the United States several days before the month of Nissan and to Israel at the end of the month to accommodate the flood of students.