No turbulence: How Lebanon’s Middle East Airlines keeps flying amid the Israel war

As the chaos in West Asia continues, one airline is keeping at it.

Lebanon’s Middle East Airlines has not let the war interrupt its busy schedule.

The national carrier continues to operate out of Beirut airport amidst the fires and clouds of black smoke even as Israel continues to pound Lebanon.

Since September 23, Israel has stepped up its bombing campaign in Lebanon, mainly targeting Hezbollah strongholds in south Beirut and in the east and south of the country. On September 30, it sent in ground troops.

It came after nearly a year of cross-border exchanges of fire, launched by Hezbollah in support of its Palestinian ally Hamas following their October 7, 2023 attack on Israel that triggered the Gaza war.

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But how has Middle East Airlines kept flying through the war?

Let’s take a closer look:

‘Most badass airline on planet’

Since Israel began bombarding Beirut’s southern suburbs as part of its offensive against the Hezbollah militant group, Lebanon’s national air carrier has become a local icon simply by continuing to do its job.

Middle East Airline is the only commercial airline still operating out of the Beirut airport, located on the coast next to the densely populated suburbs where many of Hezbollah’s operations are based.

According to Al Monitor, the airline is nearly completely owned by the Banque du Liban – Lebanon’s central bank.

The website which describes Middle East Airlines as “the most badass airline on the planet,” the national carrier has become a symbol of pride for the six million people of Lebanon.

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Among them is Khatchig Mouradian, a lecturer in Middle Eastern, South Asian and African Studies at Columbia University.

Mouradian told the website, “As someone who grew up during the Lebanese civil war and lived through every conflict in the country.”

“My immediate family has taken several MEA flights in and out of Beirut over the past month. The airline has offered a semblance of normalcy in a world turned upside down."

“It has allowed thousands to return home — wherever home is — or escape from danger, and it has done so with the same spirit that has always defined it,” Mouradian added.

Unlike the bruising monthlong war between Israel and Hezbollah in 2006, in which an Israeli strike almost immediately took Lebanon’s only commercial airport out of commission, it has not been targeted in the current conflict.

Captain Mohammed Aziz, adviser to MEA chairman Mohamad El-Hout, said the airline has received assurances that Israel won’t target its planes or the airport as long as they are used solely for civilian purposes. The carrier conducts a risk assessment each day to determine if it’s safe to fly, he said.

“As long as you see us operating, it means our threat assessment says that we can operate,” Aziz said. “We will never jeopardise the life of anyone.”

Mohamad told Al Jazeera that high level executives sped about five hours each day figuring out if it’s safe to fly in and out of Beirut

“We’ve had some very good reassurance from the government and from foreign major foreign embassies that the Beirut airport, as long as it is used for civilian purposes, will be set aside from the conflict. And it has been proven correct. so even when they are bombing not far from the airport, the airport was not touched, not affected at all,” Mohamad told Al Jazeera.

Mohammed said everyone was scrambling to leave in the early days of Israel’s escalation. He said the planes leave in Beirut were packed and those returning were mostly empty.

But now returning flights are about 50 per cent full with people coming back to Lebanon feeling assured that the airport has so far managed to remain open and that they can leave again should they have to, as per Al Jazeera.

Still, the sight of jetliners rising and descending as fire and clouds of smoke blacken the Beirut skyline can be alarming.

As per Al Jazeera, Fatima Nassar a Lebanese national who fled Beirut for Qatar, where her daughter lives, was onboard an MEA flight.

Suddenly, an Israeli strike hit an area just 500 metres away from the airport.

She was travelling on September 28 – a day after Hezbollah chief Hassan Nasrallah was killed.

“The airplane started moving and all of a sudden it stopped. I was like paralyzed. It was chaos on the airplane. And we hear bomb bomb bomb sounds outside. Like they’re going to bombard the airport. And then all of a sudden the airplane started moving. Ten minutes. Started moving very slowly all of a sudden he departed. The pilot was immaculate,” Fatima said.

Gabriel Farhat, a 62-year-old Lebanese American, who flew from Beirut to Pris in October, told Al-Monitor, “We could see the smoke from the [Israeli] bombing while in the taxi [en route to the airport] and when we were at the [airport’s] Cedar [travel] Lounge.” Farhat continued, “The airport was not crowded, and there [were] visible extra Lebanese security personnel. The mood was sad.”

Some of the most dramatic images making the rounds on social media depicting jets landing in fiery hellscapes have been AI-generated. And, Aziz said, the plumes of smoke that appear in news footage are often farther away from the airport than they appear.

Still, some strikes have landed too close for comfort. On Monday night, one hit the coastal area of Ouzai, about 200 meters (650 feet) from one of the runways. There were no planes in the area at the time.

Since the escalation began, many embassies have chartered extra commercial flights to get their citizens out. Other flights have carried Lebanese citizens to nearby destinations like Turkey and Cyprus to wait out the conflict.

The number of daily MEA flights ranges from 32 to 40 — not much below the usual number for this time of year, Aziz said. The difference: now the flights usually depart Beirut full and return two-thirds or three-quarters empty.

While many Lebanese have fled, others continue to fly in and out for business or family reasons.

Elie Obeid, a business consultant, was scheduled to fly to Brussels this month for a seminar. After his original flight on Turkish Airlines was canceled, he booked on MEA.

As his return flight was landing, heavy airstrikes were underway in the surrounding area. Onboard, Obeid was unaware of what was happening until the plane landed and he opened his phone to a barrage of messages.

He said he had mixed feelings about the experience.

“I do appreciate the fact that they are still flying, since that’s our only connection with the outer world currently,” he said. “But at the same time it is very risky. We should have been told that strikes were happening, and maybe even they could have told the pilot to request to land in Cyprus for a while until the strikes ended.”

John Cox, a US-based former airline pilot who is now an aviation-safety consultant, said when there’s a potential threat, it’s the captain’s call whether or not to proceed, and it’s not unusual for passengers to be left in the dark.

Telling them about a threat they can’t control “doesn’t really do any good, and it stresses them out. So, I would be very hesitant to do that,” he said.

But, he added, “I’m not sure that I want to fly into an area of open conflict like that with passengers on board.”

It is “pretty unusual,” Cox said, for a commercial airline to decide that operating in an active war zone is an “acceptable level of risk.”

“When you’re in an area with ongoing military operations there’s an awful lot of variables,” he said. “Even just keeping the airplanes … so that they’re not in the same airspace at the same time, that becomes very difficult.”

Daniel Bubb, aviation history professor, told the outlet foreign carriers have to take into account different factors.

“So anytime you have geopolitical conflict like we’re seeing for example in the Middle East that certainly is going to affect everyone. First of all countries have a bilateral agreements. you know if I have emergency, if not

to go somewhere else which might change my flight route. If you fly for example through airspace you weren’t supposed to you know people on the ground don’t know if you’re fighter plane or a jet.”

“So very close kind of coordination between governments and airlines are factors.”

‘Our duty’

Aziz said the airline is in “continuous coordination” with the Lebanese government and security agencies, and attempts to mitigate the risk by spacing out flights so the airport is not too crowded at any given time. About 20 per cent of its fleet is parked outside of Lebanon to reduce potential damage.

They have also taken measures to adjust for the frequent GPS jamming that is used by Israel to ward off missile and drone attacks but also disrupts civilian navigation technology.

Other airlines have different considerations, Aziz said. Their trips to Lebanon might be “one flight out of 200 or 300 flights per day, so spending two or three hours a day just to make a risk assessment for one flight is a waste of time for them,” he said.

“But for us it’s a necessity, because if we don’t do it we’ll stop operation completely.”

He added, “It’s our duty, of course, to maintain this link between Lebanon and the outside world.”

For many, having that link is a comfort — even if the journey might be harrowing.

Marie-Jose Daoud, editor-in-chief of an online journalism platform, flew to Cyprus with her parents a few days after the massive strike in Beirut’s southern suburbs that killed Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah.

As they were waiting for their flight, she saw on the news that the Israeli military had issued evacuation notices for two areas close to the airport. Soon after, she heard the muffled sounds of airstrikes through the airport’s soundproofed walls.

As the plane took off, the crew and most of the passengers remained calm. One man pointed out the window to show his young son the smoke rising. The plane made it safely to Cyprus.

Daoud said her parents want to return home despite the risks, so she is traveling back with them in a few days. She plans to leave again soon after, but she knows she can “come back at a day’s notice” if her family needs her.

“As long as the airport is open, I know that (MEA) are going to be flying,” she said.

Some are also happy that the airline is not exploiting the situation to make money.

As travel agent Jean Zaylaa told Lebanon’s L’Orient le Jour newspaper, “Cheaper levels of trenches, of economy tickets are selling out quickly, leaving only the more expensive upper levels of economy class and/or business class tickets available for purchase.”

Mouradian also hailed the flight attendants and crew.

“That, for me, is more than ‘badass.’”

“It is award-worthy excellence. I have taken countless flights with the airline for the past 25 years, and MEA is for me, through thick and thin, foremost a beacon of Lebanese hospitality.”

With inputs from agencies