Israeli airline Arkia has cancelled all repatriation flights from Dubai to Israel, it said on Wednesday. The decision creates a new problem for Israelis stuck in the United Arab Emirates after the attempted attack on board a flydubai flight. Every flight is off, including those on Thursday, the last day the repatriation flights were due to run. See our original report: Fight between Russian and Ukrainian pilots diverts flydubai plane to Saudi Arabia.

An Arkia Airbus A321neo LR (Photo: Ronen Fefer / shutterstock)

Arkia said: "The permit for the flights was valid until Tuesday, but in the evening the authorities decided to withdraw the permits that allowed Israeli airlines to fly from Dubai."

"Since then Arkia has worked with all parties involved and done everything it could to get the permits back and run the flights. Sadly, our efforts have not worked so far, so we had to cancel the flights," the airline added.

The company said passengers would get a full refund for their tickets. "In addition, passengers who can make their own way to a destination served by Arkia will get a 10% discount on a flight from there to Israel," Arkia said.

After the incident, flydubai stopped its flights to and from Israel while the investigation goes on. Hundreds of Israelis in the UAE were left without their planned flights home. Emirates, flydubai's sister airline, immediately suspended its codeshare deal with flydubai on routes to and from Israel until further notice. It also said it will not, for now, carry passengers to Dubai whose final destination is Tel Aviv, where they would switch to flights to Israel.

Al-Hamami. Right: after he was overpowered.

Saudi Arabia is also investigating the security incident on board the flight. The UAE has opened a criminal investigation, and Shin Bet is taking part.

Ofer Vaknin, head of Israel's aircraft accident investigation authority, told a news agency that Israel had offered to join any safety investigation led by Saudi Arabia, but has not yet been invited. "We are still waiting for word from Saudi Arabia inviting us to take part in the investigation," he said.

US news network NewsNation reported that New Zealand is also investigating. Al-Hamami, the terrorist pilot, spent six months there on flight training between November 2018 and May 2019.

The British newspaper the Telegraph writes that Al-Hamami, who planned to crash the plane carrying the Israeli passengers at Ben Gurion airport, studied at L3 Airline Academy, one of the biggest flight schools in Britain. He took a course that apparently linked him to a flight school in Hamilton, New Zealand.

New Zealand police told the network that Al-Hamami spent a total of 175 days in the country, and did part of his flight training there.

The Telegraph also writes that Al-Hamami said on social media that he was at his most religious in his student years, which he described as his "golden years".