On September 30, a flydubai flight to Tel Aviv experienced a midair crisis when the copilot attacked the captain, causing a steep descent. The injured captain unlocked the door, allowing two other pilots to safely divert the aircraft to Saudi Arabia.
A cockpit is a small space, hardly bigger than an office cabin. Last week, inside one on a flydubai Boeing 737, an injured captain fought off an attack from his own co-pilot. Investigators and officials say the co-pilot struck him with an axe behind the locked door and tried to seize the controls. Some later accounts say the captain was stabbed. The two versions have not been reconciled.
During the struggle the captain lost his hold on the control column, the yoke that raises or lowers an aircraft’s nose, and the airliner descended 14,000 feet, nearly half the height of Mount Everest. He nevertheless managed to push his attacker back long enough to unlatch the cockpit door. Two off-duty pilots travelling as passengers came in, took the controls and recovered the aircraft, while passengers and cabin crew restrained the co-pilot.
The aircraft was Flight 1073, bound from Dubai to Tel Aviv on the morning of 30 September. It did not reach its destination. It turned away over the desert, descended towards Saudi Arabia and landed at Tabuk.
On motive, the account so far rests on officials and unnamed sources. Israeli officials told CBS News that the Omani co-pilot, identified by sources as Hamam al Hamami, told UAE investigators he wanted to crash the jet into Ben Gurion, Tel Aviv’s main airport, and had decided to do so before joining flydubai. Two Israeli officials familiar with the inquiry said the airport was his target, and one said he had visited Israel earlier. Channel 12, citing two Israeli officials, reported that he spoke of revenge for Gaza and a wish to die as a martyr.
While the jet was descending, Israel was responding on the ground. The Israeli Air Force called the cockpit by radio and received no reply. In aviation, an unanswered call is itself treated as a warning sign. A standing emergency committee was alerted, a command centre was activated and fighter jets took off. Israeli airspace was closed as a precaution.
Sources told CBS News that Israel was prepared to shoot the airliner down had it continued, even with more than 150 Israeli passengers on board. The country keeps a standing plan for a 9/11-style attack, in which a passenger jet is used as a weapon against a city or a major airport. Under it, an aircraft may be destroyed if commanders believe it endangers a wide area and many lives. Had Flight 1073 come within a set distance of Israeli territory, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu could have given that order. Officials say he holds this authority when the alternative is a strike that would kill far more people than those on board.
The next steps were already planned. Fighters would have entered Jordanian airspace and flown close enough for a pilot to see into the cockpit and cabin. Signs of panic, a struggle or an unresponsive cockpit would have been reported to the Air Force and the committee. If it appeared to be a hijacking, and those in control stayed silent and made no demands, the decision would have passed to the defence minister and the prime minister.
It did not come to that. The jet turned towards Saudi Arabia while about 643 kilometres from Israel, and the fighters were recalled. Israel’s early assessment is that one man probably acted alone, though the inquiry remains open and other explanations are being examined.
What is not yet verified: The reported confession, the stated motive and the weapon used all come from officials and sources, not from published findings. The sequence of events in the cockpit, including the cause and extent of the descent, awaits confirmation from the flight data and cockpit voice recorders.
The people who recovered the aircraft could not have known that a shoot-down was also under consideration. They knew only that the jet was descending and that someone had to take the controls.
(Girish Linganna is an award-winning science communicator and a Defence, Aerospace & Geopolitical Analyst. He is the Managing Director of ADD Engineering Components India Pvt. Ltd., a subsidiary of ADD Engineering GmbH, Germany.)