Should Airliners Be Forced To Fly Through War Zones?
Airlines have a very strong incentive not to risk their planes getting shot out of the sky. And it’s not just a hypothetical fear.
During the Cold War, the Soviet Union shot down a South Korean passenger jet and the United States shot down an Iranian passenger jet, both mistaken for hostile military aircraft, killing hundreds of people. During more recent conflicts, Russian-backed militias shot down a Malaysian passenger jet over Ukraine in 2014 and the Iranian military shot down a Ukrainian passenger jet over Iran in 2020.
So when Israel and Iran started rattling the saber at each other last month, foreign airlines took no chances. Many companies suspended service to Israel as well as neighboring Lebanon, which has been in a low-intensity border war with Israel, and Jordan, which was in the path of a previous Iranian air raid on Israel.
Rep. Ritchie Torres (D–N.Y.) believes that this risk calculation is really an act of “discrimination against the Jewish State.” In a letter first reported by Jewish Insider, he demanded that American Airlines, Delta Airlines, and United Airlines “restore air travel to Israel” unless the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) says otherwise.
“Airlines should be prohibited from effectively boycotting or otherwise discriminating against the world’s only Jewish State. It is one thing to temporarily suspend air travel to Israel on security grounds as defined by the FAA,” wrote Torres. “But to unilaterally suspend air travel indefinitely until mid-2025, as American Airlines has done, has the practical effect of a boycott.”
Israeli and Emirati airlines are continuing to operate in Israel, noted Torres, so the real effect of the cancellations is that American travelers in Israel are “at the mercy of a de facto monopoly that can easily gouge prices with impunity.”Â
Torres did not mention the flight cancellations to Jordan or Lebanon, both of which also host large numbers of American citizens.
A spokesperson for United Airlines says, “We look forward to resuming flights as soon as it’s safe for our customers and crew.” Delta Airlines declined to comment. American Airlines did not respond to a request for comment.
In a follow-up social media post, Torres claimed that he was only “calling for a reform of the process by which air travel is suspended,” not “an immediate resumption of flights without regard to security.” He cited the FAA’s decision to ban flights to Israel during a 2014 war as an example of sensible regulations.
On Tuesday, Rep. Marc Molinaro (R–N.Y.) reportedly asked the FAA for its guidance on flights to Israel, complaining that he has “hundreds of constituents who had booked flights to Tel Aviv that are now canceled by the air carriers, with no timeline for resuming.”
But airlines don’t always wait for government warnings to cancel flights—and doing so can be a costly, fatal mistake.
Iran kept its airspace open during military clashes with the United States in January 2020, allowing a Ukraine International Airlines jet to take off from Tehran and fly straight onto the radar of a jumpy air defense crew, who shot it down. A court in Canada, where many of the victims lived, found that the Ukrainian airline should have canceled its flight as soon as the missiles started flying, despite the lack of guidance from authorities.
In 2021, the government of Azerbaijan issued an air traffic control warning about clashes with Armenian forces, then took it back the same day. Foreign airlines suspended flights through the region anyway, not wanting to risk any surprises.
Twice over the past few months—once in April and again in August—Israel had to suddenly close its airspace due to incoming missile fire. Tel Aviv’s airport shut down again on Monday morning due to a workers’ strike protesting the government’s handling of the war.
“It doesn’t make sense for airlines to constantly launch service, only to then suspend it when the next security concern arises,” wrote travel journalist Ben Schlappig in respon
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