Air travel for Israelis has been shaped by a long and painful history of assaults on planes
Mehul Srivastava and Peter Campbell in London and Neri Zilber in Tel Aviv
For Israelis watching the emergency landing of Flydubai flight 1073 on Wednesday, the events of the attack echoed a painful history of aircraft hijackings.
Between 1968 and 1986, Palestinian militants hijacked or attempted to take over at least a dozen planes. Many of the attacks were supported by leftist groups in Europe and elsewhere.
The impetus for the chaos on board the flight from Dubai to Tel Aviv is still unknown. The United Arab Emirates on Thursday said it was investigating whether the attack — in which one pilot assaulted the other in an apparent attempt to crash the plane — was premeditated or connected to “terrorist activity”.
