On a morning in April 2026, smoke from an Israeli airstrike was still drifting across Beirut's southern suburbs when a Middle East Airlines aircraft rolled down the runway at Rafic Hariri International Airport and lifted into the sky. The departure board behind it was almost entirely red, cancellations stretching across every other carrier, but the cedar tree on the tail kept moving.
This has been the story of Lebanon's national airline for the past four months. While the world's carriers cited EASA safety bulletins, suspended Beirut routes, and quietly parked their aircraft in safer airspace, Middle East Airlines kept flying. And now, from inside the airline, a reckoning is beginning.
The Airport at the Edge of a War
Beirut–Rafic Hariri International Airport sits in Lebanon's southern suburbs on the Mediterranean coast. On its eastern boundary lies Dahiyeh-a Hezbollah stronghold that has been the target of Israeli airstrikes almost every day since March 2, 2026, when a barrage of Hezbollah rockets prompted a renewed Israeli military campaign in Lebanon.
Some of those strikes have landed within a mile of the airport's perimeter. Others have hit areas directly adjacent to the main road leading to the facility. On at least one occasion, MEA Flight ME230 was on approach when an emergency alert was issued-the aircraft landed safely after Israeli jets temporarily withdrew.
Throughout all of this, the airport has remained open. Lebanon's civil aviation chief Mohammed Aziz has said the decision to stay operational was taken after continuous risk assessments, including security assurances received primarily through the US Embassy — guarantees that Israel would not target the airport or civilian flights operating from it "as long as its activities remain civilian."
Most international carriers accepted those assurances as insufficient. They cancelled flights, issued refunds, and waited for the situation to improve. MEA accepted those assurances as its operating mandate and kept flying — roughly four flights a day at the height of the crisis, reduced from its normal 70+ daily movements.
The Confrontation Behind Closed Doors
In the official narrative, MEA is a story of national resilience. In the one playing out in regulatory correspondence and pilot union letters, it is something more complicated.
Pilot groups, including the International Federation of Air Line Pilots' Associations (IFALPA) which represents pilot unions globally, have formally raised concerns with Lebanon's aviation regulator, the Lebanese Civil Aviation Authority (LCAA), about conditions inside MEA during the conflict.
The specific allegations, drawn from letters seen by Reuters and corroborated across multiple pilot accounts, are serious.
MEA's Response: Audit Passed, Allegations Rejected
The LCAA launched a formal safety audit of Middle East Airlines between May 18 and June 1, 2026 a rare and significant act in the Middle East aviation regulatory world, and one that itself signals the seriousness with which the underlying concerns were taken.
MEA's official position is clear and unambiguous, every flight during the hostilities was conducted on the basis of risk assessments developed in co-ordination with the Lebanese government and LCAA; the LCAA audit confirmed full compliance with regulatory and operational safety requirements; and the pilot allegations are "unfounded."
On the question of training assignments being used as punishment, MEA said those assignments were conducted in line with regulatory requirements and "should not be misconstrued as disciplinary or retaliatory measures."
Aziz confirmed that a closing meeting with the airline was held following the audit, but the LCAA report was still being processed as of early June, and authorities were "in the process of mediating" between the pilots and MEA. The matter is therefore not closed. The audit has concluded; the dispute has not.
IFALPA escalated the matter further, contacting the SkyTeam airline alliance — of which MEA is a member, alongside Air France, Delta and Korean Air — to raise awareness of the safety culture concerns. That escalation, to a global alliance rather than just a national regulator, signals how seriously the pilot community is treating the situation.
The Unresolvable Tension The hardest part of this story has no villain.
MEA's chairman put the airline's position plainly to reporters in June: "This year when the war started, we have experience, and we know who to communicate with, and the strikes around the airport were farther and lighter than in 2024. So 2026 is easier." He noted the airline cut its schedule by roughly half in March and April, 40% in May, and 20% in June — demonstrating that the airline did not simply ignore the risk. MEA is also in the process of launching a subsidiary low-cost carrier, Fly Beirut, with five A320s starting June 2027 — not the behaviour of an airline indifferent to its future.
Lebanon, meanwhile, has no other international airport. There is no alternative hub, no divert option for a country of six million people whose diaspora is one of the world's most active. Closing Beirut airport is not a safety decision. It is a decision to cut Lebanon off from the world, from medicine, from commerce, from the remittances that sustain much of the economy, from the diaspora families who have been flying home to check on elderly parents between ceasefires.
The question of where operational resilience ends and reckless endangerment begins does not have a clean answer in Beirut. It never has. But the fact that it is finally being asked — in writing, by international pilot bodies, through a formal regulatory audit — is itself news.
The cedar tree keeps flying. And now the world is watching more closely than before.