Israel just grounded an entire airline over an Omani passport
1 day ago · 30 September 2026Share
A Flydubai Boeing 737-8 MAX pauses at Kraków John Paul II International Airport between flights to and from Dubai. File photo. Bahnfrend · CC BY-SA 4.0
An Israeli minister just grounded a whole airline.
Here's why. The co-pilot in the violent cockpit incident on a flight to Tel Aviv holds Omani citizenship. And Oman has no diplomatic relations with Israel at all.
So Miri Regev, Israel's Transportation Minister, has suspended every Flydubai flight to and from Israel. She's ordered a formal inquiry into whether the airline broke its own agreement with Israel.
That agreement is simple. Any crew flying into Israel has to hold a passport from a country with normalised relations with Israel. Oman isn't one of them.
So this isn't just a detail about one man. It's a breach of the rule that let Flydubai fly to Israel in the first place.
Here's what happened. Flydubai flight FZ1073 took off from Dubai heading for Ben Gurion Airport a few hours ago. Partway through, the plane sent out an emergency code. Then it sent the code used for a hijacking. It dropped sharply in altitude. Then it diverted to Tabuk Airport in north-western Saudi Arabia, and landed safely.
Flydubai only flies to Israel at all because of the deal Israel signed with the United Arab Emirates in 2020. Flydubai is Emirates' cheaper sister airline, based in Dubai. Nothing in that deal covers Oman, because there is no Israel-Oman relationship to cover.
Now, what actually happened in the cockpit. Accounts don't agree.
Israel Hayom says the Omani co-pilot stabbed the captain, and says the captain is Emirati.
Ynetnews says the opposite. It says the co-pilot, the Omani national, was the one stabbed, and that he was subdued by the captain, who it says is Indian.
Both pilots were wounded. Both were hospitalised after the plane landed, according to a statement from Tabuk airport.
Passengers and extra crew on board helped subdue whoever was behind the violence, before the plane came down safely.
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Ben Gurion International Airport in Israel. File photo. Sarah Stierch · CC BY 4.0
So what does Israel think happened? That depends which part of the Israeli government you ask.
Officials from the IDF, Mossad and Shin Bet have assessed this as a suspected act of terror, or an attempted hijacking. That's according to the Jerusalem Post. Benjamin Netanyahu, Israel's Prime Minister, called a security meeting with his defence chiefs. The Israeli Air Force scrambled fighter jets and raised its alert level.
But Israel's own Prime Minister's Office told a different story later. It said the situation was under control, that this wasn't a hijacking, and that the emergency codes came from a physical fight between the two pilots, not an attempt to take the plane.
Two arms of the same government, two different answers.
Bezalel Smotrich, Israel's Finance Minister, said Israel should judge this on intent, not outcome. He said whoever tried to bring the plane down should be treated as if he had murdered everyone on it.
And here's what's missing. There is no evidence right now that whoever caused this had backing from any foreign state or organisation, according to the Jerusalem Post.
Flydubai, for its part, has said almost nothing. It confirms the flight had an incident, landed safely at Tabuk, and that everyone on board is safe. That's it. No comment on the co-pilot's nationality. No comment on the treaty breach. No comment on Miri Regev grounding its flights.
Israel Hayom reports the co-pilot had only been at Flydubai for nine months. No other outlet has confirmed that.
And there's a loose thread. A separate Flydubai flight on the same Dubai-Tel Aviv route, FZ1081, briefly showed as turning back to Dubai on flight-tracking data around the same time, before carrying on as normal. Nobody has linked it to the FZ1073 incident.
So here's what nobody can tell you yet. Who the co-pilot really is. What his motive was. Whether he'll face terrorism charges. Whether Saudi Arabia will share what it finds with Israel. And whether Flydubai's own vetting let an Omani national fly a route it wasn't supposed to be on.
Right now, Flydubai's Israel flights are grounded. And Miri Regev's inquiry is the only thing working out how this happened.
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