Tel Aviv flight makes emergency stop in Riyadh after Israeli traveler suffers stroke

A flight carrying Israeli passengers from Dubai to Tel Aviv was forced to make an emergency landing in Saudi Arabia on Wednesday after a passenger suffered a medical emergency.

Flydubai flight FZ1125 took off at 4:17 p.m. from Dubai but landed at an airport in Riyadh over an hour later, after an Israeli passenger suffered a stroke mid-flight.

Although Israel and Saudi Arabia do not have any ties, the plane was given clearance to land without any issues, and Saudi medical teams were on hand to provide emergency medical treatment to the passenger, Israel’s Foreign Ministry said, noting that Riyadh had acted “in accordance with international aviation conventions.”

The passenger was transferred to a hospital in Riyadh for treatment.

Rom Gedasi, one of the roughly 80 passengers aboard the flight, told the Ynet news site that the plane sat on the tarmac for more than three hours, during which time passengers received very little information about what was going on.

“We were without reception for hours,” he said, “we couldn’t contact [people in] Israel.”

Miri, who was identified by her first name only, told Ynet that the atmosphere was calm aboard the plane, despite the concerns many had about landing in a hostile country.

“The flight attendants were more stressed than us,” she said.

The incident was not the first time that a plane carrying Israeli passengers has been forced to make an emergency landing in Saudi Arabia, which only opened its airspace to Israeli airlines in July 2022.

In August 2023, an AirSeychelles plane with at least 128 Israelis on board became the first direct passenger flight from Saudi Arabia to Israel when it brought home passengers who spent the night in Jeddah after their flight was forced to land due to electrical problems.

At the time, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu thanked the kingdom for the warm welcome given to the Israelis and praised its “good neighborliness.”

Jerusalem and Riyadh have inched closer to one another in recent years, and were reportedly nearing a US-brokered diplomatic breakthrough before Hamas’s October 7, 2023, massacre, but efforts have stalled over the past two years of fighting in Gaza.

Israel’s Channel 12 reported earlier this week that Saudi Arabia conveyed a message to Israel that there would be  “major implications in all fields” if it annexes any part of the West Bank in response to international recognition of a Palestinian state.

These steps could include Riyadh declaring the prospect of Saudi-Israeli normalization dead, or once again closing its airspace to Israeli flights.