Flydubai's reputation is suddenly under a spotlight after Wednesday's suspected hijacking of flight FZ1073, when a violent struggle in the cockpit forced the Dubai to Tel Aviv flight to land in Saudi Arabia. By Wednesday evening, the airline had temporarily suspended all of its flights to and from Israel while the investigation continues.
Israeli officials say they're investigating the first officer on suspicion of trying to crash the plane, and the country's defense minister has called it an attempted terror attack. Flydubai says the cause and motive are still under official investigation, and it has apologized to passengers whose plans have been disrupted.
So will this do lasting damage to the airline? That depends on what investigators find and on what flydubai does next.
Timeline
Flydubai Flight FZ1073
Israeli officials describe it as an attempted terror attack. Flydubai says the cause and motive remain under official investigation.
Contrail
The Impact in Israel
Israel is where the damage is clearest, since flydubai had built unusual goodwill there. After war broke out in October 2023, many foreign airlines stopped flying to Israel, but flydubai kept going. By November 2024 it had operated more than 1,800 flights there while canceling just 77, according to aviation analytics firm Cirium. For many Israelis, it became one of the few reliable ways to leave the country.
That relationship is now being tested. Transportation Minister Miri Regev has pushed for flydubai flights to stay suspended until the investigation is complete. She has also questioned whether the airline broke the aviation agreement between Israel and the UAE, which she says restricts which pilots can fly to Israel. Not everyone agrees. Israel's former ambassador to the UAE argued the airline deserves a full investigation rather than action based on speculation, pointing out that it kept flying through the hardest times.
Past Recoveries
Airlines have come back from far worse. Flydubai itself survived a fatal crash in Russia in 2016 that killed all 62 people on board, and it went on to grow into one of the region's biggest budget airlines. Germanwings faced global scrutiny after its co-pilot deliberately crashed a plane in 2015, yet its parent company Lufthansa remains one of Europe's biggest and best-known airline groups.
Travelers often seem to separate the act of one individual from the airline as a whole, especially when the airline responds openly. What tends to hurt more is a sense that the company missed warning signs or failed to cooperate.
What Comes Next
Three questions will shape how travelers see flydubai from here: whether investigators find gaps in how the airline screens and monitors its pilots, whether it answers Israel's questions about the aviation agreement and how openly it shares what it learns.
For travelers outside Israel, the day-to-day impact is likely to be small. Most of flydubai's passengers fly elsewhere in a network that spans much of the Middle East, Africa and Asia along with parts of Europe. Inside Israel, winning back trust will take longer. It may also depend on more than the airline's own actions, since the decision to resume flights now sits partly with Israeli security officials.
Wednesday also showed something reassuring about the system around the airline. Crew and passengers stopped the threat, a pilot landed the plane safely and everyone on board survived. How flydubai handles the weeks ahead will matter more to its reputation than the terrifying minutes in the air.
