Airport headlines rarely make for feel-good stories. You don’t have to look far to find horror stories about flight delays, canceled connections, and overbooked planes. Social media is regularly flooded with viral videos of snaking lines, rude gate agents, frustrated passengers.
Yet on on June 10 of this year, the Auschwitz Jewish Center Foundation (AJCF) awarded American Airlines its Medal of Valor for Extraordinary Compassion and Moral Leadership in recognition for what a handful of its employees did, out of public view, during one of the darkest weeks in recent Jewish history.
The award ceremony took place at the AJCF’s annual gala held at Chelsea Piers in New York City, and recognized the extraordinary work of, among other American Airlines employees, Zak Rakrouki and Mohamad Najjar, ensuring that a friend of slain Chabad-Lubavitch of Bondi Rabbi Eli Schlanger make it to Australia on time for the rabbi’s funeral.
“The employees who coordinated this effort, including Zak Rakrouki and Mohamad Najjar, showed extraordinary empathy and compassion during a moment of profound grief,” said AJCF director general Jack Simony. It was, he said, “far more than exceptional customer service” and an act of moral leadership reflecting “a culture where operational excellence and human compassion go hand in hand.”
To Farewell a Friend
Early the first morning of Chanukah 2025, Eli Rutman awoke to the news that his close friend Rabbi Eli Schlanger, a 41-year-old husband, father of five, and beloved Chabad-Lubavitch emissary, had been murdered.
On the evening of Sunday, December 14, 2025, during a Chanukah menorah lighting hosted by Chabad of Bondi in Sydney, Australia, terrorists opened fire on the crowd. Fifteen people were murdered, including Schlanger. Approximately 40 others were injured. It was among the darkest days in the history of Australian Jewry.
Rutman was devastated. The South Florida resident had grown up with the slain rabbi. Though Chanukah was underway, Rutman knew he had to be there for his friends’ funeral, though the odds of making it in time seemed slim.
On Monday morning he booked a last-minute itinerary: an American Airlines flight from Miami to Los Angeles, and a connecting Sydney-bound flight on another carrier. The first leg was delayed by nearly two hours. Sitting on the plane and watching the minutes tick by, it was clear to him that he would miss his connection and, quite possibly, the funeral entirely.
He had resigned himself to the outcome. Unbeknownst to him, a very different story was unfolding on the ground.
‘A Request I Have Never Made Before’
At Los Angeles International Airport (LAX), Zak Rakrouki—who leads American’s Customer Care team, encompassing all above-the-wing staff from the check-in lobby to the gate—was locking his office door ready to go home for the night, when the social media escalation came in.
Rabbi Levi Feldman, a friend of Schlanger’s flying to the funeral from New York, was planning to meet Rutman in Los Angeles for the Sydney leg of the journey. Seeing that Rutman’s flight was delayed, he reached out to American Airlines on X to explain the extraordinary circumstances.
Seeing the message, Rakrouki returned to his office.
In an interview with Chabad.org, Rakrouki recalled thinking to himself as he pulled up the reservation: “There’s no Sydney flight in here. It’s just Miami to LA.” It took some digging to learn the passenger held a separate ticket on a competing carrier for the international leg.
Rakrouki’s first instinct was to see if the other airline would hold their flight, or at least allow American to arrange a ramp transfer which meant meeting the passenger planeside and driving him directly to the gate. He spent nearly an hour negotiating. The competing airline declined to hold their flight. Rakrouki then asked whether they’d at least transfer the ticket’s funds so American could rebook the passenger on its own flight to Sydney. That, too, went nowhere.
By then, Rakrouki had already looped in Mohamad Najjar—known as Mo—the Control Center manager on duty that night, whose team decides which gates flights are assigned to, coordinates holds for connecting passengers, and works with American’s Integrated Operations Center (IOC)—the airline’s nerve center—on everything from routing to weight and balance.
Rakrouki laid out the situation. And before the two men had secured a way to actually get the passenger a ticket, they had already decided: American would hold its own flight to Sydney for him.
“We had decided we were going to do it, but the rest of the airline didn’t know it yet,” Najjar told Chabad.org. He moved the arriving flight’s gate assignment to Tom Bradley International Terminal, positioning it as close as possible to the Sydney departure gate, and immediately notified the IOC of the coming delay.
Holding a flight is not a small thing. Rakrouki and Najjar deal with short connection holds regularly—five or ten minutes—but even then normally for passengers connecting in bulk. This was different in every respect.
“It was difficult: Firstly, we wanted to hold a flight for 46 minutes. Second of all, it’s Sydney of all flights [a long haul flight with major logistical ramifications]. And third of all, we want to hold it for one person,” Rakrouki said. “It was a request I have never made before in my career, nor can I imagine it ever happening again.”
With the competing airline unwilling to transfer funds, the two turned to Radney Robertson, American’s Managing Director at LAX, who authorized something rarer still: a complimentary ticket, so the passenger could board the flight to Sydney without obstacle.
From there, it moved quickly. American’s dispatchers relayed a message to the flight crew still in the air over the Pacific-bound leg from Miami. A flight attendant approached Rutman’s seat with a note from the captain, letting him know a Sydney-bound American flight would be held for him. Before landing, he was moved up to a seat near the front of the aircraft.
The Sydney-bound crew—some 18 crew members in all—were told simply that they were holding for a passenger with an urgent need. No one objected.
Meeting at the Gate
When the flight from Miami touched down, Rakrouki and Najjar were waiting.
“Is this the Sydney passenger?” Najjar asked, as the passenger—Eli Rutman—stepped off the jet bridge.
“That’s kind of when all the work we had done before kind of came to fruition,” Rakrouki said. “When we realized we’re really making an impact.”
Rutman was escorted briskly to the waiting flight, told his flight was being held and his seat comped, and offered condolences on behalf of the airline. Comprehending the moving nature of the encounter, Rakrouki, Najjar and Rutman took a photo together before he boarded the flight to Australia.
In an ironic twist: despite the hold, the competing airline’s Sydney-bound flight—the one Rutman had originally been ticketed on—ended up landing in Sydney after American’s flight anyway.
Rutman was escorted off the plane first in Sydney and met by American’s premium service team, who walked him swiftly through immigration. Neither Rakrouki nor Najjar knew whether he’d made it in time until the next day, when a follow-up post appeared on the same X account that had first reached out.
“We either got him there or we didn’t get him there, and then that would mean he missed the funeral,” Najjar said. “It was great to hear that the effort paid off.”
Rutman arrived at Schlanger’s funeral service in Sydney just minutes before it began.
A Medal, and a Larger Meaning
Over the past several years, AJCF has documented and advocated against a rise in antisemitic incidents facing Jewish travelers in commercial aviation, including discriminatory treatment and tampering with kosher meals. Against that backdrop, American’s response stood out.
“At a moment when the Jewish community was mourning one of the most devastating antisemitic terrorist attacks in recent memory, American Airlines demonstrated what genuine humanity looks like,” said Simony. AJCF Chairman Simon Bergson added that American’s staff “chose empathy over indifference and action over bureaucracy,” in a moment that “changed the outcome of a profoundly human moment.”
American Airlines CEO Robert Isom, addressing the more than 130,000 employees across the airline, said the moment reflected the company’s stated purpose: “Caring for people on life’s journey isn’t just a motto, it’s what we come to work to do, every day.”
For Rakrouki and Najjar, standing at the gala among Holocaust educators, survivors, and Jewish communal leaders was its own kind of reckoning.
“We came away from that experience in awe of what that community had gone through,” Rakrouki said, “and how we were able to make that small difference after such a tragic event.”
Asked whether the night felt like an extraordinary departure from the job, or simply an extension of it, Najjar didn’t hesitate.
“Every day we come in and we want to do the right thing, the next right thing,” he said. “This was just a culmination of everybody coming together to do the next good thing that they can.”
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