Airlines Plan ‘Rescue Flights’ For Stranded Israelis In UAE After FlyDubai Incident

Via The Cradle

Israeli national airline El Al announced on Friday that it had canceled flights scheduled to bring Israelis home from Dubai after the UAE withdrew landing permits for Israeli carriers.

“Due to the cancellation of approval for Israeli companies to land in Dubai, as was reported by the authorities in Israel, we are forced to cancel, at this stage, our rescue flights,” the airline said in a statement posted on social media.

El Al said it remains prepared to operate charter flights to Dubai to bring Israeli citizens home as soon as it receives official approval.

The Israeli airline did not explain why the landing permits had been withdrawn. Emirati authorities have not provided an explanation.

Israeli passengers were stranded in the UAE after an incident on a FlyDubai flight from Dubai to Tel Aviv. The plane’s copilot allegedly stabbed the captain and tried to crash the aircraft before passengers and crew managed to enter the cockpit to restrain him.

Other FlyDubai pilots who happened to be passengers on the flight made an emergency landing in the Saudi city of Tabuk.

Emirati authorities ordered an investigation to establish the circumstances and motives behind the incident. Israeli authorities quickly claimed the incident was a terror attack.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu claimed in a Fox News interview that the copilot had undergone “Islamist radical indoctrination” and that the man was suicidal. Netanyahu gave no evidence for the claim.

Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz went further, calling the incident an “attempted jihadist terrorist attack” and saying the copilot intended to crash the aircraft with everyone aboard.

One of the passengers, 50-year-old Yaniv Hayun, claimed that he ran to the cockpit after the stabbing and stabilized the plane after it plunged 20,000 feet toward the ground. 

Hayun, the owner of a plumbing company in Israel, has no background in aviation. He claimed​ he knew how to pull the plane out of its nose-dive, saving more than 170 people, after watching an aircraft crash TV show.

A pilot interviewed by CNN said that aspects of the plane’s fall “did not make sense” and that, had the plane plunged so fast, it would have “disintegrated completely.”

The pilot in the CNN OutFront clip is Aaron Murphy, a commercial pilot and flight instructor. He is sitting in a flight simulator recreating the Flydubai FZ1073 incident so viewers can see what the cockpit and the aircraft itself would have looked like during the sudden… https://t.co/SV6zmXfCCa pic.twitter.com/JOZiSn9nwv

— xpos (@blame_d_cat) October 1, 2026

One day before the incident took place, Netanyahu held a security establishment assessment and talks with opposition leader Yair Lapid over an alleged, pre-Israeli election “security threat” that the premier had announced earlier on Tuesday. 

The FlyDubai incident has proven politically useful for Netanyahu, who met with Hayun in front of the media, hailing him as a hero. Netanyahu is seeking a seventh term as prime minister in Israel’s upcoming Knesset elections, scheduled for October 27.