It sounds like the plot of a television thriller: a co-pilot attacks the captain at cruising altitude, an aircraft plunges thousands of feet, an injured pilot manages to open the cockpit door, passengers storm the flight deck, a plumber grabs the controls, and two off-duty pilots eventually land the aircraft safely in Saudi Arabia.
Then comes the detail that makes the entire story sound almost too improbable: the passenger who briefly handled the controls reportedly said he knew what to do because he had watched Air Crash Investigation. What made people frame it as a fake story was Netanyahu’s quick jump to claim it an Islamist terrorist attack. This instantly sets eyes rolling upwards, while leading them to assume it was definitely an election stunt. So the story was degraded, on social media, at least.
Adding to this, all the other extraordinary coincidences was precisely why the Flydubai FZ1073 incident has attracted disbelief and satire online, including a viral post by nmutemohit, which mocks the account and invokes Donald Trump’s description of an Israeli plumber supposedly learning to fly from an air-disaster television programme through Benjamin Netanyahu. In this case, critics accuse Netanyahu of turning Flydubai crisis into an election stunt.
But there is a crucial distinction between a story containing extraordinary claims and a story that is fabricated. The evidence available by October 3 indicates that the emergency itself was real. What remains under investigation is the precise sequence of events inside the cockpit, the motive of the co-pilot and whether every dramatic detail circulating online accurately describes what happened.
What is actually established?
Flydubai Flight FZ1073 was flying from Dubai to Tel Aviv on September 30 when an emergency unfolded aboard the Boeing 737 MAX. Saudi authorities confirmed that the aircraft made an emergency landing at Prince Sultan bin Abdulaziz International Airport in Tabuk at approximately 9:45 a.m., carrying 174 passengers and eight crew members. The passengers were subsequently transported onward, while the injured pilots received medical treatment.
Flight-tracking data provides an important piece of independent evidence. According to Reuters, the aircraft suddenly descended by more than 16,000 feet in roughly 30 seconds during its most dramatic dive. The aircraft subsequently transmitted emergency signals and diverted toward Saudi Arabia.
That does not, by itself, prove what happened in the cockpit. Flight-tracking data can establish the aircraft’s movements, not the intentions of the people inside it. But it does establish something important:
The aircraft really did undergo an extraordinary loss of altitude.
The cockpit attack
The most serious allegation concerns the co-pilot’s attack on Captain Smit Machchhar. Early reports described the incident cautiously as an “altercation” or “security incident”. Israeli officials subsequently said that the co-pilot attacked Machchhar and attempted to crash the aircraft.
Machchhar himself has since described the struggle. Speaking to Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi from his hospital bed, he said he fought back after being attacked and, despite his injuries, managed to open the cockpit door when he realised the aircraft was plunging. That allowed passengers and crew members to enter and overpower the attacker.
The UAE investigation has now provided a much more concrete account. On October 3, UAE Attorney-General Hamad Saif Al Shamsi said investigators found that the co-pilot had attacked Machchhar with a crash axe and attempted to take control of the aircraft. He described the incident as an attempted terrorist act, while stressing that investigators were continuing to establish the full circumstances, motives and possible links.
That development matters because it addresses one of the obvious questions raised by the early reports: How could a weapon have been available inside a modern commercial cockpit? The answer given by UAE authorities is that it was an emergency crash axe, a standard piece of aircraft safety equipment.
Then comes the strangest part: the plumber
Yaniv Hayun, an Israeli passenger aboard the aircraft, has said that after passengers entered the cockpit and the attacker was subdued, he briefly took hold of the controls as the aircraft was plunging. Hayun is not a commercial pilot. He is a plumber.
He has also said that his knowledge of what to do came partly from watching the television series Air Crash Investigation, also known as Mayday. That sounds ridiculous. It is also a claim that has been independently reported by multiple news organisations.
CBS News reported Hayun’s account and separately spoke with Alex Bystram, executive producer of Mayday. Bystram said the programme uses commercial pilots to advise actors about aircraft controls and procedures, and said he was not surprised that a viewer could have picked up some accurate information from the programme.
But there is an important caveat. Hayun’s account should not be confused with proof that a person with no flight training can safely fly a Boeing 737. The aircraft was ultimately brought under control by trained pilots who were travelling aboard the flight.
The two off-duty pilots may be the biggest piece of the puzzle
The aircraft reportedly had two Flydubai pilots aboard who were not operating the flight but were travelling as passengers. Once the immediate cockpit struggle was brought under control, they were able to take over the aircraft and divert it to Tabuk.
Reuters reported that these pilots were likely travelling as backup or relief crew, a practice associated with airline operations. So the sequence was not simply: “A plumber watched television and landed a Boeing.”
What about the 17,000-foot plunge?
This is another area where different reports have used slightly different numbers. Reuters reported a drop of more than 16,000 feet in approximately 30 seconds during the most dramatic descent. Other accounts have described the aircraft as plunging approximately 17,000 feet.
The difference is not necessarily evidence of fabrication. It can arise from different definitions of when the descent began and ended, the source of the altitude data and whether journalists are describing the entire descent or its most extreme portion.
What is significant is that independent flight-tracking information supports the central fact that the aircraft underwent a severe and abnormal descent.
So why does the story feel unbelievable?
There are several reasons. First, the event contains an extraordinary chain of coincidences: The captain survived the attack, he was able to open the cockpit door, passengers were able to enter, subdue the attacker, a passenger was able to assist with the controls, and two trained pilots happened to be aboard, and in the end, the aircraft reached an airport capable of receiving it safely.
Remove any one of those pieces and the outcome could have been very different.
Second, early reporting mixed confirmed facts, eyewitness accounts, statements by political leaders and assumptions about motive. That is a dangerous cocktail for social media.
Trump actually said the story was not independently verified. This is where the viral mockery surrounding Trump needs some context. Trump did describe Hayun as an Israeli plumber who had never flown a plane and said he had learned what to do from watching an air-disaster programme. But Trump also explicitly qualified his account. He told reporters that he had heard the story from Netanyahu and others and said, in substance, that he did not know whether it was true.
It means Trump’s colourful retelling should not be treated as the primary evidence establishing what happened aboard FZ1073.
The stronger evidence comes from the aircraft’s recorded flight path, statements by the airline and authorities, passenger accounts, Captain Machchhar’s own account and the ongoing UAE investigation.
Several Israeli reports say that Israel has restrictions on pilots from countries that do not have diplomatic relations with Israel, and Oman does not have diplomatic relations with Israel. After the FZ1073 incident, Israeli Transport Minister Miri Regev reportedly ordered an investigation into how an Omani national was allowed to serve as co-pilot on a Tel Aviv-bound Flydubai flight.
The investigation is therefore more interesting than the viral joke or Netanyahu’s election stunt
The nmutemohit post is useful in one narrow sense: it highlights how astonishing the passenger’s account sounds. But calling the entire FZ1073 story “fake” goes further than the evidence currently allows because there is now substantial evidence that a genuine aviation emergency occurred, with an independently documented evidence of an extraordinary descent, Captain Machchhar was seriously injured, and passenger accounts of the cockpit intervention. There are accounts of Hayun briefly assisting with the aircraft controls, trained pilots aboard who subsequently took control.
Saudi Arabia has officially confirmed the emergency landing and the number of people aboard; and the UAE Attorney-General has now publicly stated that investigators believe the co-pilot planned and attempted a terrorist act.
We live in an increasingly plastic, superficial, digitally manufactured world. Social media has trained us to question almost everything we see. AI can create photographs of people who never existed, videos of events that never happened and voices saying things that were never said. The result is a strange reversal. The more extraordinary a real event appears, the more readily people assume it must be fake. Still, the investigations are on, and one has to wait for the final conclusion.
JANPATH NEWS NETWORK (JNN)
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