On October 14, Ben Schlappig, founder of the travel site One Mile at a Time (OMAAT), told readers it had stopped loading for many users in the United Arab Emirates. He said the block wasn't yet consistent across the country. Days earlier, OMAAT had reported the abrupt exit of Etihad's chief commercial officer, and followed up with a piece in which current and former employees described a toxic leadership culture.
Neither Etihad nor any UAE authority has publicly linked the block to the coverage, but the timing is hard to miss. Schlappig has stressed that his reporting concerned the expatriate executives running the airline rather than the UAE, and acknowledged that the country cares "a lot about its image." The episode sits alongside a run of cases in which criticism of an airline, an airport or a travel brand has drawn a response from a state or its institutions.
Airlines · Free Speech
When Criticizing an Airline Draws a Response
Contrail
When Criticism Gets a Response
Egypt. In November 2024, Schlappig published a scathing post asking whether any major airport was worse than Cairo's. Egypt's Civil Aviation Ministry hit back with a lengthy statement calling his claims baseless, saying it would "take all necessary legal action" against people spreading unfounded allegations, and releasing security-camera video of his walk through the terminal.
The UAE. In an earlier case, reported by Gulf News in 2019, a Dubai court fined an Emirates steward Dh20,000, about $5,400, for misusing social media to defame the airline. Emirates had complained to police about doctored images, including flight attendants with animal faces, posted on a Facebook profile in his name. He denied making the account and said he'd been hacked.
Indonesia. In 2019, a Garuda Indonesia employees' union reported a vlogger to police after he posted a photo of a handwritten business class menu on Instagram. Garuda then briefly banned passengers from taking photos and videos on board, before dropping the policy after a backlash.
Thailand. In early 2024, Thai Airways sued a passenger whose Facebook post attacked the crew's decision to divert a Bangkok–Melbourne flight to Sydney. He retracted the post and apologized, but the airline pressed ahead with the case.
Why Governments Care
Airlines can occupy an unusual place where commerce meets national identity. National carriers often serve as symbols of a country's sophistication and global reach, so their performance is sometimes treated as a reflection of the country itself, especially in places that invest heavily in aviation and tourism. Emirates and Etihad are owned by the governments of Dubai and Abu Dhabi. For both, tourism brings in significant income, and the airport is part of the national pitch. When the airline is an extension of the government, a critique of its management can read as a critique of the state's competence.
The law can back that up. In the UAE, the federal cybercrime law makes it an offense to post content online that insults others or damages the reputation of the state and its institutions, with penalties that can include heavy fines and prison time. Things a traveler might post without a second thought at home, like an angry review of an airline or an unflattering video of its staff, can carry real legal risk there.
That's a sharp contrast with the US, where it's very hard for a company to win a lawsuit over an honest review, and a 2016 federal law, the Consumer Review Fairness Act, bars businesses from using contracts to stop customers from posting them. An American reading OMAAT at home and a resident reading it in Abu Dhabi are, in effect, living under two very different sets of rules about what they can say about the same airline.
What It Means for Travelers
Trying to bury a story rarely works. The OMAAT block became news in its own right and was picked up by other travel outlets. For travelers and writers, the practical point is that an airline or a state can take action over public criticism, so when you're in a country like the UAE, it's smarter to raise complaints directly with the airline or regulator and keep public posts factual. For airlines that act as instruments of a state, the lesson may run the other way: the quickest way to amplify an unflattering story is to be seen trying to suppress it.
