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An extraordinary chain of events led to the shocking mid-air incident.
By Aimee EdwardsFlydubai flight FZ1073 was carrying 174 passengers when the alleged attack unfolded as the Boeing 737 MAX 8 travelled through Saudi airspace on its way toThe aircraft plunged from about 33,000 feet to 17,000 feet in roughly a minute, prompting an emergency alert and fears of a hijacking.
Israeli fighter jets were scrambled as the plane veered towards the Jordanian border before eventually landing safely in Tabuk, Saudi Arabia. But while investigators work to establish exactly what happened, aviation experts say the extraordinary chain of events raises serious questions about cockpit security, crew screening and what happens when the threat comes from inside the flight deck.
The incident unfolded when the co-pilot allegedly attacked the captain, who was identified by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu as Indian national Smit Machchhar. Netanyahu said Machchhar was seriously injured but managed to open the cockpit door, allowing passengers to enter and intervene.
“If he had not opened that door, the other pilot could have inhibited the door opening, and no one could ever have got in,” he said. “The whole flight could have gone in a totally different direction. ” One passenger, Yaniv Hayoun, said he put the alleged attacker in a chokehold and pulled him away from the controls, before other passengers helped restrain him.
When asked by Netanyahu how he knew to pull back the controls to help bring the plane back under control, Hayoun credited his experience watching a long-running television series. A reserve Flydubai crew who was travelling on the aircraft then took control of the plane and landed it safely. De Crespigny said the presence of the additional pilots was another extraordinary stroke of luck.
“There were a lot of fortunate things taking place for this situation that, to be frank, I would never have thought would happen in an airline,” he said. Security expert Will Geddes also told Sunrise the fact that additional pilots happened to be travelling as passengers may have been critical to the flight landing safely. Your cookie settings are preventing this third party content from displaying. But getting the aircraft back under control was no simple task.
The Boeing 737 MAX 8 entered a steep descent, with de Crespigny estimating it was dropping at a rate of up to 30,000 feet per minute. Flight could have sparked ‘dramatic’ military event De Crespigny said the situation could have become even more serious had the aircraft remained out of control as it approached Israeli airspace.
“I would think if the aircraft was in Israeli airspace, and it was out of control, in terms of following instructions, the military would have done a dramatic event to stop it, doing a 9/11 type event,” he said. The extreme manoeuvre appears to have caused significant damage to the aircraft, with de Crespigny believing the rudder may have failed under the forces placed on it.
“If a pilot put an input in when the aircraft’s travelling too fast, and this is probably what happened, then the rudder just simply failed under the air loads when it was flying above its maximum speeds,” he said. Despite the damage and the extreme conditions, the pilots managed to regain control and divert the aircraft to Saudi Arabia, leaving investigators to determine how the alleged attack happened in the first place.
Geddes said the alleged use of a small pocket knife will be a major concern for investigators, particularly given the level of security surrounding commercial aviation. Passengers are required to pass through airport security before boarding, with prohibited items, including knives and other weapons subject to screening.
Geddes questioned “why pilots are not going through the same rigorous checks that the rest of us do before we actually get on the plane” allowing one to bring a weapon onto the aircraft. According to Geddes, the knife was allegedly used to attack and incapacitate the captain, meaning a weapon that would ordinarily be prohibited from the cabin was suddenly being used inside the most secure part of the aircraft.
If the allegation is confirmed, investigators will need to establish where the knife came from, how it was brought through security, and whether any existing procedures should have detected it before the aircraft departed Dubai. Geddes said air marshals became much less common after the heightened security measures introduced following the September 11 attacks, as the number of hijackings declined.
He believed it was unlikely a Flydubai flight would have had an air marshal onboard, meaning there was likely no specially trained security officer available to intervene when the alleged attack began.
“I think it’s highly unlikely they had an air marshal. They probably didn’t have the budget for it,” Geddes said. For de Crespigny, the incident presents a particularly difficult security challenge because the alleged attacker was not attempting to break into the flight deck, he was already there.
The reinforced cockpit doors introduced following the September 11 attacks are designed to prevent unauthorised people from entering the flight deck, but in this case, the danger allegedly came from a member of the flight crew. De Crespigny said the incident was “out of the blue”, and he had never received training for a fellow pilot deliberately attacking another crew member. He said the incident would likely prompt airlines to examine their security and recruitment procedures.
“You would have to question maybe the type of recruiting process the airline has to bring someone on board whose culture is so different to perhaps the airline and the other pilot,” he said. The circumstances surrounding the alleged attack, including the motive and exactly what led to the confrontation, remain under investigation. Flydubai confirmed that an “altercation” occurred in the flight deck but has urged people not to speculate about the cause or motive while authorities investigate.
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