Flight to Tel Aviv nixed due to sick crew member, not pilot refusal, Brussels Airlines says

(Oct. 21, 2026 / JNS)

Brussels Airlines was accused on Wednesday of canceling a flight to Tel Aviv because the pilot refused to fly the route, but the airline told JNS the flight was nixed due to a sick crew member.

The “entire crew” signed in for the flight, but “during the flight preparations, one of the crew members started to feel sick and ultimately decided not to operate the flight,” the airline spokesman told JNS.

“Unfortunately, on such short notice, we weren’t able to find a replacement crew member and ultimately had to cancel the flight,” the spokesman said. “All passengers were reaccommodated on other flights. We apologize for the inconvenience.”

The spokesman said that since the airline resumed flights to Israel in early August, this was the first flight cancellation.

Earlier in the day, Rabbi Menachem Margolin, chair of the European Jewish Association, said he heard the flight was scrapped because the pilot wouldn’t fly to Israel and that “families, elderly people and children were left at the gate.”

He called it “discrimination.”

He later corrected himself. “It had nothing to do with the destination. The information I received was wrong, and I am correcting it here,” he wrote. “I thank the airline for the clarification and wish the crew member a speedy recovery.”

The Brussels Times reported that workers targeted the airline in a strike in early September, claiming that the airline violated an agreement by forcing workers to staff flights to Israel.

The union said that members shouldn’t be entering a war zone and that there was a “mental and ethical impact” of traveling to Israel, the paper reported.