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Home » EL AL » Did Authorities In Abu Dhabi Refuse To Let EL AL Passengers Disembark After Diversion?
EL ALUnited Arab Emirates

Did Authorities In Abu Dhabi Refuse To Let EL AL Passengers Disembark After Diversion?

Matthew Klint Posted onApril 19, 2024April 18, 2024 13 Comments

a white and blue airplane flying in the sky

An EL AL flight diverted to Abu Dhabi due to heavy rains in Dubai only to sit on the tarmac for three hours and then return to Tel Aviv…a nine-hour flight to nowhere. Did authorities in Abu Dhabi refuse to let passengers disembark despite the short distance between the two emirates? I have my doubts…

Were Passengers Denied The Chance To Disembark In Abu Dhabi After EL AL Diversion?

EL AL 971 took off from Tel Aviv (TLV) early on Wednesday morning, April 17, 2024, for Dubai (DXB). The flight was operated by a Boeing 777-200 (registration number 4X-ECE). But as the flight approached Dubai, it became clear it could not safely land due to an unprecedented rainfall that had fallen over the previous 24-hour period.

The flight was forced to land in nearby Abu Dhabi (AUH). There, the 777 sat on the ground for three hours with plans to take off for Dubai once the weather improved. When the weather failed to improve, the aircraft took off again and returned to Tel Aviv.

Citing “multiple reports” but not linking to even one of them, Paddle Your Own Kanoo reports that “local officials denied permission for passengers to end their journey in Abu Dhabi so the plane was forced to return to Tel Aviv with everyone still onboard.”

That is quite concerning…if true.

However, I have found no corroboration beyond a few tweets from anti-Israeli folks celebrating that Abu Dhabi stood up to “the Zionists” by forcing the plane to turn around. Those assertions are not backed by anything…

I find this hard to believe given that Dubai and Abu Dhabi are the same country, with the same immigration laws, the same UAE Customs Authority, and the same UAE Ministry of the Interior (as reader Mak pointed out). Indeed, heads should roll if some misguided bureaucrat at the airport took it upon himself to violate UAE law to satisfy his own prejudice.

But there are multiple scheduled nonstop flights between Tel Aviv and Abu Dhabi each day. This isn’t something like new like an EL AL plane landing in Saudi Arabia.

Furthermore, the highway connecting Abu Dhabi and Dubai flooded and was closed: it’s not like the passengers could have easily hopped on a bus or taxi to Dubai.

So maybe that is the better explanation, or EL AL decided for its own security and for the safety of its passengers that it would be better to transport passengers back to Tel Aviv?

Until we have more facts presented, I will stop far short of accusing of Abu Dhabi officials of bigotry…


image: @Aero Icarus / Wikimedia Commons

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About Author

Matthew Klint

Matthew is an avid traveler who calls Los Angeles home. Each year he travels more than 200,000 miles by air and has visited more than 135 countries. Working both in the aviation industry and as a travel consultant, Matthew has been featured in major media outlets around the world and uses his Live and Let's Fly blog to share the latest news in the airline industry, commentary on frequent flyer programs, and detailed reports of his worldwide travel.

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13 Comments

  1. Alert Reply
    April 19, 2024 at 9:20 am

    First mistake is going to nightshirt Dubai . Second mistake is going to nightshirt Abu Dhabi . Only sane move is going back to civilized Israel .

    • Aaron Reply
      April 19, 2024 at 7:43 pm

      The only sane move is you need to get back on your medication.

  2. JoeMart Reply
    April 19, 2024 at 9:28 am

    It could be the airline didn’t want to pay airport fees. It would cost more to hire a local contractor last minute to process luggage,catering and other incidentals.

  3. Dude26 Reply
    April 19, 2024 at 9:59 am

    The Emiratis don’t give a f*k about the “Palestinians”…
    They, like others in the gulf, including Saudi which is poised to normalize relations with Israel, understand this is all a game the Arabs have been playing for the last decades. Game is over, and it wasn’t one that was fruitful for the Arabs – all they got was radicalization that threatens their own countries.

    • Alert Reply
      April 19, 2024 at 1:54 pm

      @Dude26 … +1 . Plus the Israeli arabs are far better off in Israel than in any arab country .

      • Aaron Reply
        April 19, 2024 at 7:42 pm

        Eh, not really. But keep staying in your zone of delusion if it helps get you through the day.

      • Jerry Reply
        April 20, 2024 at 2:04 pm

        I think anyone would be just fine in any GCC country. Especially if they were afforded full rights, unlike they are in Israel.

    • GUWonder Reply
      April 20, 2024 at 7:12 am

      No one funded “Muslim radicalization” and related blowback more than the US, Saudi Arabia and the UAE in their unholy alliance against the “Godless Soviets” following the Russian invasion of Afghanistan. The Iranians, sort of ironically, had been relatively minor players in international radicalization until after George W Bush pulled a massive Pottery Barn “bull in a china shop” “you break it you own it” move with the cheering on from Netanyahu and the other “Israel can do no-wrong” neo-cons that thrive from chaos of sorts. Also. the “Shias are best” Iranians had the demographic headwind of there simply being way more Sunni than Shia Muslims, and so the Iranian ability to radicalize people was challenged because of that and the massive amount of disposable resources available to US-Saudi-Emirati-led rivals and all the other Sunni v Shia dynamics of relevance to geopolitics and even communalism/tribalism and related violence.

      • Matthew Klint Reply
        April 20, 2024 at 9:54 am

        This is very true – an oft-overlooked point of analysis in trying to understand the root of today’s issues.

  4. Jason Reply
    April 19, 2024 at 10:45 am

    Having worked for one of the middle eastern carriers in their government affairs and network planning departments, I can tell you that even though Abu Dhabi and Dubai are, indeed, in the same country, that they do have, with multiple other countries, and in many times, their own distinct bilateral agreements with other countries. This means that access for some airlines into some countries could be different. There is a reason that Emirates flies to Mauritius and Etihad doesnt (Abu Dhabi doesnt have an air transport agreement with Mauritius). There is a reason that until recently there have been many more flights from Dubai to Tehran than from Abu Dhabi (Dubai, as a traditional trading port, has warmer relations with Iran than does Abu Dhabi). So even though they’re the same country, they arent necessarily the same in all aspects. Emirate does matter.

    That said, for this particular situation, I think this more than anything is just the fact that the road was flooded and there was no easy way to get people from one place to another.

    • GUWonder Reply
      April 20, 2024 at 11:01 am

      While the federal state is ultimately controlled by Abu Dhabi’s rulers and powers are apportioned among the different emirs’ families, there are inter-emirate alliances and divisions that have their own play in what happens. For example, Abu Dhabi and Sharjah are historically more in alliance than Abu Dhabi and Dubai are with each other. But as Abu Dhabi has way more fossil fuel resources and revenue coming in that way than a depleted Dubai, Abu Dhabi can play a different game than Dubai. Also, Dubai’s trading history has long had it more open to Iranians and others than Abu Dhabi which found itself and remained far closer to the British and American oil-men and the Conservative and Republican heads of government and their hanger-ons (even as they also bought Tony Blair too).

  5. Maryland Reply
    April 19, 2024 at 9:27 pm

    Thanks Jason,

    Good information and the best likely explanation.

  6. GUWonder Reply
    April 20, 2024 at 6:59 am

    Immigration standards haven’t historically been uniform across all the Emirates that are part of the UAE, and I wouldn’t be surprised if there are still some regional variances within the UAE in some regards.

    That said, the idea that Abu Dhabi would be more interested in “sending an anti-Israeli message” than Dubai just doesn’t make sense based on what I know and whom I know among Emirati royals and their hanger-ons. Especially when they were very recently smirking that Iran’s massive barrage of projectiles and drones aimed at Israel were neutralized so easily.

    I would be less surprised if AUH was merely prioritizing the handling of its own and some prioritized Dubai run-off and had capacity concerns that impacted the LY diversion flight too.

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