This Note explores, within an analytical framework, the ban on Qatari flights (as part of the 2017 Qatar Diplomatic Crisis) by Saudi Arabia and a few other Middle Eastern States. Grappling with the ban, which is based on the sovereignty of States in their airspace and columns above it, informs that international air law has a fixation for a certain classicism that makes resolution of legal issues difficult in the face of contemporary realities. This Note problematizes that difficulty, revealing that the ban is motivated by classicism; which is then juxtaposed with the resistance of Qatar to the ban as a modernist resistance. In the binary of classicism and modernism, claims of Saudi Arabia and Qatar simply vacillate, leaving the issues unresolved. The Note ends with the observation that so long as claims vacillate, formal means of dispute resolution, particularly the one under the International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO), are less likely to succeed, for ICAO has the classicism approach structurally inbuilt in that renders ICAO less receptive to Qatar’s modernist claims. However, alternative means of dispute settlements under the aegis of ICAO have the scope to deal with the problem of binaries without falling prey to the determinism of classicism and modernism.