A United Airlines flight scheduled to depart New York for Tel Aviv at 7 a.m. Sunday remained grounded after the flight crew refused to operate the flight.
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The story emerged after Gil Eyal, an Israeli living in New York who was scheduled to be on the flight, reported the incident on Twitter.
"UA84 postponed to tomorrow morning citing crew refusal. Wonder why the crew couldn't think about refusing before dragging hundreds of people to the airport," Eyal tweeted.
At first, Eyal took a video of a United representative informing the passengers that the crew had "refused" to operate the flight.
Then Eyal said that passengers were told that crew had cited a "curfew" at Ben-Gurion International Airport due to Operation Breaking Dawn against Palestinian Islamic Jihad rocket attacks, which on Sunday was still in full swing.
"Your flight has been delayed until 5:45 on August 7 because of a curfew at Tel Aviv's airport is restricting planes from landing," a screenshot of a United message to passengers read.
"Now you're shifting the story claiming this was due to a curfew in Tel Aviv after announcing to call passengers this was due to a crew refusal," Eyal told United in a Twitter exchange.
A spokesperson for Ben-Gurion Airport said Sunday that there was no curfew of any kind in place.
@united flight UA84 postponed to tomorrow morning citing crew refusal. Wonder why the crew couldn't think about refusing before dragging hundreds of people to the airport.
— Gil Eyal (@gileyal) August 6, 2022
A traveler named Itay, who was supposed to be on the flight with his family, said, "They told us that the crew wasn't willing to fly to Israel and the flight was cancelled."
Omer, who also had a ticket for the flight, said that the original message had been that the cancellation was due to either weather conditions or a technical problem.
Two other US airlines, Delta and American Airlines, also cancelled flights from New York to Tel Aviv on Sunday due to weather conditions in New York.
There has been no official response from United Airlines about the cancelled flight.
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