The Israeli national airline El Al has announced the cancellation of the special repatriation flights scheduled for this Friday, organized to return Israeli citizens who remain in the Emirati city of Dubai to Israel, after the United Arab Emirates (UAE) revoked the necessary authorization for these operations.
"Due to the cancellation of the landing permit for Israeli companies in Dubai, as reported by Israeli authorities, we are forced to cancel at this time our rescue flights LY972 and LY974, scheduled for Friday, October 2," the company stated in a statement.
The airline has also emphasized that it remains ready to "operate special flights to Dubai and repatriate Israelis as soon as possible" who are in the UAE "as soon as approval from the official authorities is received," without any further details being provided at this time regarding the schedule or conditions for restoring these routes.
The announcement was made after information emerged indicating that the UAE had withdrawn permits for these routes, a decision that comes after Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich communicated that he had allocated public funds to finance these flights in order to facilitate the departure of Israelis from Dubai who were in the emirate.
The context of this situation is marked by the incident that occurred on Wednesday on a Flydubai flight covering the route between Dubai and Tel Aviv, which had to be diverted to Saudi Arabia due to an "altercation in the cockpit" between the pilots, after the co-pilot assaulted the pilot with the alleged intention of crashing the plane, a claim that has not been officially confirmed.