Why this mattersIsrael's Prime Minister's office says it's organising the safe return of passengers. And it says this was not a hijacking.
So who's to blame? Israel's Transportation Minister, Miri Regev, has demanded that every Flydubai flight to Israel be suspended.
She's asked Israel's Civil Aviation Authority to investigate the UAE. The claim is that the co-pilot was Omani, and the Israel-UAE aviation agreement says pilots flying to Israel have to come from countries with normalised relations with it. Oman doesn't have that. But this is unverified.
Here's the twist. Israel's own Transportation Ministry says Ben Gurion Airport is operating as usual. The Israel Airports Authority says the country's airspace is open.
And a second Flydubai flight, FZ1081, briefly turned back toward Dubai on flight trackers. Then it carried on to Tel Aviv as scheduled.
A third Flydubai plane has now landed at Tabuk. It's there to collect the stranded passengers from the first flight, who are boarding to fly on to Israel.
So the minister demanded a ban. But nothing so far shows that ban was ever put in place.
Israel and the UAE normalised relations in 2020, under the Abraham Accords. Flydubai runs eight flights a day between Dubai and Tel Aviv because of that deal. Israel has no diplomatic relations with Saudi Arabia at all, which is why landing in Tabuk stands out. This isn't the first time a Dubai-Israel flight has come down there either. A Flydubai flight made an emergency landing in Riyadh last September, for medical reasons.
Mossad, Shin Bet, the Israeli military and the Transportation Ministry are all now investigating, according to Israeli broadcaster Kan.
El Al, Israel's national airline, says it's helping stranded Israelis get home, and is arranging a special flight from Bangkok. Its shares jumped more than 7% on the Tel Aviv Stock Exchange this afternoon.
So here's the real question. Did Miri Regev's demand ever actually become an order? Or has Flydubai just kept flying the whole time?
Flydubai hasn't said anything. Neither has the UAE. Nobody has confirmed the co-pilot's nationality, his motive, or exactly how badly the captain and first officer were hurt.
