The Flydubai scare exposed how thin aviation safety can be

The most unnerving detail in the Flydubai incident is not the emergency landing in Saudi Arabia. It is the fact that 174 people were airborne while one man in the cockpit had already stabbed his colleague and, according to Israeli officials, apparently tried to crash the aircraft. The line between a frightening incident and a mass disaster turned out to be thin, and it was drawn by passengers and crew forcing their way into the cockpit.

Benjamin Netanyahu has been notably cautious about the question everyone else wants answered immediately. Asked by Fox News whether Iran was involved, he said it was too early to say. He said the attacker was being investigated in Saudi Arabia after the plane made its emergency landing, and he expected him to be taken to the United Arab Emirates, where the flight had taken off. On CNN, Netanyahu added that Israel had received no warning or advance intelligence about the incident.

The flight, Flydubai FZ1073, left Dubai International Airport at 03:05 GMT, bound for Ben-Gurion Airport in Israel. Roughly two and a half hours into the journey, flight-tracking data showed the aircraft dropping more than 17,000 feet in less than two minutes over Saudi Arabia. Minutes later, it signalled emergency code 7700, then switched to 7500, the code for hijacking. About 20 minutes after that, the aircraft looped back into Saudi airspace and later began a manual descent before landing at Tabuk airport in the northwest of the kingdom.

By then, the response had already widened beyond the cabin. Israeli and Saudi air forces dispatched fighter jets, while Netanyahu held urgent consultations. Flydubai said there had been an altercation in the flight deck and that on-duty crew travelling on the flight secured the aircraft and diverted it safely to Tabuk. The airline said its immediate priority was the safety, health and wellbeing of passengers and crew, and support for the official investigation. A neat corporate line, of course, but the real security system here was less polished: passengers, crew and a cockpit door under assault.

The stabbed pilot was identified as Indian national Captain Smit Machchhar. He was taken to hospital and was reported to be in a stable condition. Netanyahu and India’s prime minister, Narendra Modi, both praised him as a hero. The Indian embassy in Saudi Arabia said he remained stable, while Modi said he had shown courage and resolve in the face of grave danger. Netanyahu said Machchhar fought back, opened the cockpit door and enabled passengers and crew to overpower the attacker.

The passengers later described a scene that sounds chaotic precisely because it was. Yaniv Hayun said the plane began to spin and descend before he and a crew member entered the cockpit and helped restrain the attacker. He said he put the man in a chokehold, then pulled the controls until another pilot took over. Another passenger, Zvika Meness, said the attacker was tied up with his own zip ties and multimedia headphones. Children and families were on board, he said, and the event left many deeply shaken.

The passengers, most of them Israeli, later arrived in Tel Aviv on a repatriation flight. At the airport they were greeted by crowds playing music, singing, dancing and waving Israeli flags. A paramedic from Israel’s ambulance service said many were emotional and crying as they came off the plane. Netanyahu called the episode a very serious security incident and praised those who intervened. Israel Katz went further and described it as an attempted jihadist terror attack, while Donald Trump said it seemed the attacker may have been a terrorist or had other motives.

That is the familiar political reflex: name the culprit, define the motive, move on. Yet the facts already on the table are serious enough without the rush to tidy them up. A cockpit assault became a mid-air emergency, and only the intervention of passengers and crew prevented something far worse. The Saudi investigation now has the unenviable task of sorting out what happened, while everyone else tries not to pretend certainty is the same thing as knowledge.

Written by Andreas Hofer andreas.hofer@alpineweekly.com