What is the ruling on a woman traveling by plane without a mahram?

Question : What is the ruling on a woman traveling by plane if she is with a group of women? And what is the ruling on her performing 'Umrah if her mahram met her in Jeddah and she performed 'Umrah with him? Is her 'Umrah valid? And if it is not valid, what is the ruling?

Answer : Yes, what I see is that it is not permissible for a woman to travel without a mahram, even by plane, even with women, due to the generality of the saying of the Prophet (peace and blessings be upon him) . The burden is lifted from him, and the hadith is general. If someone says, "The Messenger (peace and blessings be upon him) did not know whether planes would appear in the future that would make the distance of ten days one hour or less?" The answer is that if the Prophet (peace and blessings be upon him) did not know that, the One who sent him, Allah the Exalted, knew it: . He creates vessels you do not know, and things other than vessels. So we say, if you say the Messenger did not know about this, we say the One who sent him knew. And the Prophet (peace and blessings be upon him) did not exclude anything. What indicates the lack of exception is that a man said , and he did not ask for details. He did not say, "Are there women with her?" "Is she safe?" "Is there danger for her?" So when he did not ask for details in a place of possibility, it became the equivalent of generality. Therefore, one of the known principles among jurists or among the scholars of usul al-fiqh is that leaving out details in a place of possibility takes the place of generality in the statement. This is what I see in this issue: it is not permissible for a woman to travel, neither for 'Umrah nor for Hajj nor for anything else, by plane or by car, whether she is safe or not, except with a mahram. The possibility of harm exists even in a plane. First, the plane flight might be delayed; it might be scheduled for twelve o'clock, for example, and be delayed until three o'clock. This woman remains in the airport, and the one waiting for her remains in the other airport. If he loses hope of her arrival, he returns. Second, if it takes off at the scheduled time, is it guaranteed that it will land at the second airport at the scheduled time? No, there might be a problem with the plane that requires it to return. There might be things in the air that were not calculated for that prevent the plane from landing at the designated airport. And if we go beyond that and the plane lands at the designated airport, the one who is to meet her might be prevented from reaching the airport by something, such as sleep, illness, a car malfunction, traffic congestion, or something similar. So if she arrives at the airport, who will meet her if the mahram is not present? And if we go beyond that and say the mahram arrived at the scheduled time for the plane's landing and met the woman, who will be next to her in the plane? We do not know. There might be a man next to her in the plane who does not fear Allah and does not have mercy on the servants of Allah, and he might tempt her and incite her. And the woman is quick to be emotionally affected and is a stranger. For this reason, wisdom requires what the generality of the hadith indicates: preventing a woman from traveling without a mahram.