LONDON: Posts started appearing on social media on Wednesday claiming the UAE’s official carrier Emirates Airlines had suspended a Tunisian pilot after he refused to fly to Israel.
Emirate Airlines responded saying the claim was completely untrue.
“Emirates has never employed any pilot by this name and all reports circulating on social media around this are false,” the airline said in a tweet.
Emirates has never employed any pilot by this name and all reports circulating on social media around this are false.
— Emirates Airline (@emirates) January 13, 2021
CJ Werleman, an Australian journalist based in the US, posted a tweet claiming the airline fired its pilot.
The Twitter-verified journalist who works for the Byline Times as per his account, praised the pilot and called him a “hero”.
Other media sites followed suit, with the Middle East Monitor publishing an article carrying the story without fact-checking or contacting Emirates to check the information.
The UAE and Israel signed a historic normalization deal in August 2020 that included travel to and from both countries.
