Should you be worried about your pilot’s politics?

Planning a trip to Israel in the near future? Up until now, worrying about the political positions of the pilot, flying you there, has probably never even crossed your mind!

Sadly, now it’s something you may have to seriously consider.

Although it started with the flydubai flight of September 30th, headed to Tel Aviv’s Ben Gurion Airport, when co-pilot (Hamam al-Hammami) attacked the captain (Smit Machchhar) with a cockpit axe, causing the aircraft to rapidly descend, with the intent to crash it, that may not be a one-off.

Because when the discovery was made that a United Airlines pilot, scheduled to fly to Israel, allegedly supports Iran and Hezbollah, the flight was barred from flying to the Jewish homeland.

Although the 39-year-old Iranian-born, pilot, Sina Amjadian, a resident of Utah, has worked for United since November, 2022, it took four years for him to be flagged as a possible safety threat, after some individuals paid attention to his social media posts, which praised the Islamic Revolutionary Guard (IRGC) and the Hezbollah terror organization. Suddenly, the dots began to be connected.

As a result, Israeli officials began scrutinizing the pilot more closely, arriving at the conclusion that he should not be permitted to fly to Israel.

While “Israel's Ministry of Transport and Road Safety prohibits foreign airline pilots and cabin crew members from operating or traveling aboard flights entering Israeli airspace, if they hold single or dual citizenship from a country that lacks formal diplomatic relations with Israel,” that policy has, unfortunately, not always been strictly enforced.

Consequently, ever since a tragedy was miraculously averted in the flydubai incident, there has been a tightening of the rules, in order to make sure that each pilot is vetted before the plane takes off, unlike what occurred on September 30th, when the crew list was provided only after the plane left Dubai.

So, while pilots and aircrew, who held citizenship from Iran, Iraq, Lebanon and Pakistan were not banned in the past from flying into Israel, it only took one near miss to convince the Transportation Ministry that they had to ramp up their due diligence to make sure that nothing like this would ever happen again.

Now, everything is under review when it comes to foreign airlines that are scheduled to fly to Israel. As a result, “citizens of 27 countries are not only barred from piloting planes to or from Israel, but are also barred from being on board flights to and from Israel. The 27 countries covered in the notice include Iran, Iraq, Lebanon, Oman, Pakistan, Qatar, and Saudi Arabia.”

As crazy as it seems, gone are the days when one could assume that they would safely arrive in Israel, when flying an airline other than El Al. That’s because no one could have predicted that the anti-Israel ideology, held by extremists, would make its way into the commercial market of aviation.

Given what we’ve seen over the past three years, though, it makes sense that if someone wanted to kill hundreds of Jews and Christians (traditionally the most likely passengers to fly to Israel), all they had to do was get a commercial pilot’s license, log in enough hours and then become a crew member of an airline making the trip to the Middle East.

That aircraft could easily become a lethal weapon of destruction in one moment, effectively killing more people than a ballistic missile, which can always be intercepted to avoid the catastrophe which it is capable of executing.

Just think about it. When contemplating the best ways to terrorize people, what could be scarier than the realization of one’s flight purposely crashing midway to its destination?

The tragedy is having to consider such scenarios these days, but the profound hatred, directed at Jews, and their ancestral homeland, is making everyone pause, rethinking their every move, wondering if danger lurks in the most unlikely of places.

Israel’s national airline, El Al has to be relieved that this is not one of their worries. That’s because the Israeli airline “primarily hires pilots who are Israeli citizens, with fluent Hebrew, the vast majority, roughly 80% to 90%, of whom are veterans of the Israeli Air Force (IAF).

Founded in 1948, the airline came into being when then President Chaim Weizmann was unable to return to Israel from a conference he attended in Geneva. When the Swiss imposed a military embargo, preventing an Israeli military plane from landing in Switzerland to fly him home, that plane had to be altered for civilian use only.

The name “El Al” was taken from the scripture in Hosea 11:7 which has the words El Al in the original Hebrew text, translated to mean "upward," "to the skies," or "to the heights.

Although El Al has had its share of hard times, especially due to the scarcity of passengers during Covid 19 and the war which followed October 7, it still remains the safest and most reliable airline for anyone traveling to or from Israel. Perhaps, that is why it is often the most expensive of all the other companies.

Nonetheless, there is an assurance that no pilot or crew member will be hijacking the plane or trying to crash it before it lands. And in the year 2026, when none of that can be taken for granted anymore, it’s comforting to know that there is at least one airline that has everyone’s back!

That clear distinction between El Al’s commitment of preserving and protecting the lives of its travelers, should attest to the fact that Jewish values are the highest standards.

That is in contrast to other airlines, whose pilots are not always properly vetted to make sure that their personal religious beliefs or political positions are not those that would endanger the passengers, whose well-being has been entrusted to them.

If that doesn’t serve to point out the depravity and hypocrisy of a demonic ideology, fixated on ending life, then probably nothing will convince Jew-haters that their own safety is more guaranteed when putting it in the hands of the very people they despise.

No one should have to worry about their pilot’s politics, but at a time when evil has teamed up with air travel, flying can no longer be taken for granted, as what was once touted as the safest method of transportation!