Airline to cancel all flights to country over geopolitical instability | Official Website of Louis Velazquez, entrepreneur, finance guy and tech innovator

While the UN Security Council just voted in a Gaza peace plan after the Israeli military’s response to the Hamas attacks on October 2023, the current ceasefire is on rocky grounds as both sides accuse the other of violations.

Earlier this year, U.S.-based airline giants Delta Air Lines and United Airlines both restarted more of their routes to Tel Aviv International Airport (TLV) that were suspended during the worst of the fighting. After the longest pause, American Airlines joined their ranks by confirming it would bring back its flight from JFK in March 2026.

But as other international carriers like Lufthansa and Air France also restart flights, UAE airline Emirates will not restore the service to Tel Aviv that it launched in 2022 and stopped running after the Israeli military’s entry into Gaza in 2023.

Emirates will not bring back Tel Aviv flight it launched in 2022, airline confirms

As initially reported by aviation outlet SimpleFlying, the flight was slated to restart in early 2026 but has now been officially scrubbed from its flight schedule. Without elaborating on the reasons for the cancellation, Emirates confirmed that its Tel Aviv service will not return.

For the year before it was pulled, the flight ran on a sleek new Boeing 777-300ER with eight first-class, 42 business, and 304 economy seats.

At the time it launched, Emirates spoke of growing tourism interest between Israel and the United Arab Emirates that has since been thrown into chaos by geopolitical instability and periods of relative quiet broken by renewed military action.

Turkish Airlines and Greece’s Pegasus Airlines are among the other carriers to fully exit Israel and give up their slots to airlines that have taken them up as passenger numbers increase.

Emirates is one of the two flag carriers of the United Arab Emirates.

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As some airlines restart flights to Israel, others give up their slots

In September 2025, Ryanair CEO Michael O’Leary also said there was a “real possibility” that the low-cost carrier “won’t bother going back to Israel,” although its primary reason is the high airport fees and requirement that it use a specific terminal at Ben Gurion that was driving up costs.

A number of other airlines based closer to the region are not restarting flights to Tel Aviv due to either political solidarity with Gaza, or the significant cost of having to launch and then once again pull service if war resumes.

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In past statements before resuming its first flight to Israel from JFK in September 2025, Delta said that it was “continuously monitoring the evolving security environment and assessing our operations based on security guidance and intelligence reports.”

On the last day of October, the airline also announced that flights from Atlanta Hartsfield-Jackson (ATL) and Boston Logan (BOS) will be added to the list of cities from which it is resuming service by April 2026 for the former and October for the latter.

Between November and January, the JFK-Tel Aviv route will also expand to a second daily frequency “to meet increased winter travel demand.”