El Al, Arkia and Israir are starting repatriation flights from the UAE to Tel Aviv on Friday after flydubai suspended all its Israel service following an attempted cockpit attack. On flydubai flight FZ1073 from Dubai to Tel Aviv on 30 September, a copilot attempted to crash the plane by stabbing the pilot, and the aircraft made an emergency landing in Tabuk, Saudi Arabia. All passengers survived.
El Al is charging 249 dollars for a one way Dubai to Tel Aviv ticket, Arkia 279 dollars, and Israir 299 dollars. El Al is running two flights on Friday and Arkia one, with Arkia expanding to five flights on Saturday and Israir planning 8 to 10 flights a week. The Israeli government is compensating the airlines for flying the empty leg out to the UAE before bringing passengers back, and Transportation Minister Miri Regev's ministry has also asked Etihad Airways to add capacity on its Abu Dhabi to Tel Aviv route.
Tourism executive Mark Feldman put a number on the urgency: every day flydubai is suspended means at least 1,700 Israelis stranded. He described two groups among them, those waiting for a direct repatriation flight and those already routing home through Europe or Cyprus rather than wait.
Dubai had been running 8 to 10 daily flights to Israel before the attack, a route that only existed because of the direct service launched in 2020 after the UAE and Israel established diplomatic relations. One attempted hijacking has now grounded that entire route and left three Israeli carriers improvising a replacement at a government subsidized loss, a measure of how much daily travel has come to depend on a single foreign airline's schedule.