"I want you to know that I connect the two stories"
Delaying a weekend levayah until Sunday had been done before. When the Chofetz Chaim passed away on a Friday in Elul 1933, Rav Chaim Ozer Grodzenski advised delaying the levayah until Sunday, to enable the maximum number of participants to reach Radin.
When Rav Aharon Kotler was niftar on a short November Thursday in 1962, gedolei Yisrael decided that the levayah should be held on Sunday morning on Manhattan’s Lower East Side to maximize kavod hameis. A minyan of Rav Aharon’s close talmidim hoped to accompany his aron to Eretz Yisrael, where he was to be buried on Har Hamenuchos next to his father-in-law, Rav Isser Zalman Meltzer, and they asked those making the arrangements to try to obtain complimentary tickets for the flight.
Rav Yaakov Kamenetsky instructed that under no circumstances should El Al — which still flew on Shabbos then — transport Rav Aharon to Israel. The only remaining option was TWA. The yeshivah’s lay leaders appealed to the airline, highlighting the valuable publicity of flying the great Torah leader to his final resting place.
Amos Bunim, Rabbi Moshe Sherer, Zev Wolfson, and other activists were stymied by regulations requiring State Department approval for such plans. They began contacting senators to write letters attesting to Rav Aharon’s eminence. Finally on Sunday morning, Bunim reached J. Wilson Reed, TWA’s federal liaison, who calmly assured him that although the offices were closed for the weekend, the tickets would be provided and the fare refunded. In addition, he made an airport hangar available for hespedim and arranged that talmidim be given the rare privilege of loading the aron onto the plane.
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