![\"How](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/10\/1791003610_639_1920.jpg\")
How the stabbing incident unfolded on Israel-bound flydubai plane | Deconstructed<\/p>\nAt about 9.30 on Wednesday morning local time, Tali Manes was taking her six-year-old daughter, Nina, to the toilet on the regular flydubai flight from Dubai to Tel Aviv when she heard a series of heavy blows against the cockpit door.<\/p>\n
Manes, an Israeli bank executive, immediately told a flight attendant seated nearby that something was wrong. When he did not react, she shouted at him: \u201cSomething is happening in there!\u201d Seconds later, the man \u201csimply went to the [cockpit] door and opened it\u201d, Manes told Israel\u2019s Channel 12 TV.<\/p>\n
Inside, the scene was the stuff of travellers\u2019 nightmares: blood spattered over the cockpit walls and a brutal struggle in progress between the badly injured pilot and the co-pilot, who was armed with some kind of sharp weapon. There was no one at the controls of the Boeing 737.<\/p>\n
Manes shouted again: \u201cHe\u2019s stabbing the pilot, he\u2019s stabbing the pilot, come help!\u201d<\/p>\n
How the stabbing incident unfolded on Israel-bound flydubai plane | Deconstructed<\/p>\n
Many of the details of what happened<\/a> on flight FZ 1073 are still unclear, but what happened next is well documented by witness testimony and videos.<\/p>\n As the plane went into a steep dive, losing 16,000ft of altitude in about a minute, most of the 182 passengers screamed, prayed and tried desperately to reassure panicking children. But a small group rushed to the cockpit<\/a> and overpowered the co-pilot. One, a plumber, copied an action seen on TV documentaries about plane crashes to pull the aircraft out of its dive.<\/p>\n Two off-duty pilots on the flight, both among the handful of non-Israeli passengers, then took over the controls of the now almost rudderless aircraft to guide it eventually to a landing 90 minutes later in Tabuk, Saudi Arabia. In the meantime, Manes had helped truss the co-pilot with a telephone cord while a dentist treated the injured Indian pilot, Smit Machchhar. It was a \u201cgreat miracle\u201d, Manes said<\/a> on eventually reaching Tel Aviv on an emergency flight 10 hours later.<\/p>\n Flight map<\/a><\/p>\n In a video call with Narendra Modi, the Indian prime minister, broadcast live by TV networks, Machchhar, who is recovering in an Abu Dhabi hospital, said he had been \u201cfighting for my life\u201d<\/a>.<\/p>\n The pilot successfully sent an alarm to air traffic control signalling the attack and then, as his strength ebbed, managed to unlock the cockpit security door.<\/p>\n \u201cI had so many wounds. I had fallen down,\u201d Machhchar said. \u201cAt one point, I realised that if I didn\u2019t get up \u2026 then passengers would lose their lives.\u201d<\/p>\n For the moment, the identity of the co-pilot who attacked Machchhar is unknown, though regional sources said he was an Omani national who had joined flydubai \u2013 which is owned by the United Arab Emirates<\/a> (UAE) government \u2013 between five and nine months ago.<\/p>\n The co-pilot was barred from flying in Oman over concerns he had adopted extremist views, the Associated Press quoted a source as saying on Saturday, and was subsequently hired by flydubai.<\/p>\n In Israel, there is little doubt about the co-pilot\u2019s intentions. \u201cThe co-pilot is a terrorist who tried either to hijack the plane or bring it down as a suicide. The worst scenario is he was trying to get into Israel,\u201d said Arik Arad, the chair of the aviation cybersecurity consultancy Cyviation and El Al\u2019s former head of security at Ben Gurion airport<\/p>\n Benjamin Netanyahu, Israel\u2019s prime minister, has claimed<\/a> the co-pilot was exposed to \u201cIslamist radical indoctrination\u201d, saying Israeli investigators had found evidence on social media accounts that he wanted to \u201ckill Jews\u201d.<\/p>\n \u201cThe attacker, he calls out to the aircrew: \u2018Kill me, kill me,\u2019\u201d Netanyahu told Fox News, adding it was \u201cclear he was suicidal\u201d.<\/p>\n Experts said there have been only a handful of instances<\/a> of suicide by plane \u2013 cases where the pilot\u2019s motivation is primarily to kill him or herself by crashing the plane, rather than using the plane as a weapon, as in the 9\/11 attacks.<\/p>\n Flight altitude graph<\/a><\/p>\n In 2015, the co-pilot of a low-cost German airline flight who had hidden evidence of psychiatric illness from his employers deliberately crashed<\/a>, killing himself and 150 others. Suggestions that the crash of an AirIndia 787<\/a> in Ahmedabad last year was the result of a pilot deliberately cutting fuel to engines have been fiercely disputed<\/a>.<\/p>\n Terrorism experts are sceptical that the flydubai co-pilot\u2019s only motivation was to end his own life. \u201cThe odds that a pilot would decide to commit suicide and just happen to be flying a plane full of Israelis are pretty low,\u201d said Colin Clarke, a terrorism expert at the respected Soufan Center in New York.<\/p>\n \u201cNetanyahu has a big interest in this being terrorism, but the best explanation is probably the most obvious one [ie terrorism],\u201d he said. \u201cThe question \u2026 is: was [the co-pilot] recruited by a group or an organisation \u2026 or was he radicalised alone? In which case, what was hyping him up, given he was flying a planeload of Israelis? Could that be Gaza?\u201d<\/p>\n People disembark from a flydubai plane carrying Israeli passengers from the disrupted flight at Ben Gurion international airport near Tel Aviv. Photograph: Ariel Schalit\/AP<\/p>\n Security services have been warning of a wave of radicalisation<\/a> across the Middle East prompted by the war in Gaza, which came to an inconclusive halt with a fragile ceasefire a year ago. But there has been limited evidence as yet that any violent Islamist extremist groups have gained support as a consequence of the conflict.<\/p>\n Terrorism experts said the most obvious group that might be involved in such an attack would be al-Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP), which is based in Yemen and has a history of efforts to bring down planes. They said AQAP had recently sought to launch or inspire violence internationally.<\/p>\n \u201cAviation remains the classic propaganda by deed,\u201d Clarke said. \u201cIt\u2019s been said that terrorism is theatre, and nothing is more theatrical than taking down an airplane. You get a body count, media coverage, you get your message across, and this makes a plane the ultimate spectacular terrorist attack.\u201d<\/p>\n There are now many questions for aviation security<\/a>. Changes made to plane design after 9\/11, which allowed pilots to lock cockpit doors from the inside, have long been controversial among experts. If Machchhar\u2019s desperate efforts to allow access to the flight deck had been unsuccessful, there is little doubt all onboard FZ 1073 would have died.<\/p>\n A passenger with blood on his T-shirt onboard the flydubai plane. Photograph: Amit Segal<\/p>\n There are also questions about screening of pilots. This can be expensive for airlines and could deprive them of valuable crew if too many fail more rigorous efforts to expose psychiatric illness or extremist views. Pilots may be reluctant to fly routes where they undergo greater screening, and some may hide physical or psychological problems for fear of being grounded.<\/p>\n Arad said: \u201cThe important issue \u2026 is that obviously pilots are not being screened enough. Lots needs to be done.\u201d<\/p>\n Dubai international airport, the world\u2019s busiest airport<\/a> for international passenger traffic, has built some of its appeal<\/a> on a reputation for safety in a volatile region, said Philip Baum, a visiting professor of aviation security at Coventry University in England.<\/p>\n \u201cThey are very conscious of the fact \u2013 a little bit like Israel in many respects \u2013 that they cannot afford to have a terrorist attack happening on a flight out of there,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n The UAE has ordered investigators to \u201ccollect information and evidence to determine the truth of the incident, its circumstances, details and motives, and to verify the extent of its connection to any terrorist activity or purpose, or the existence of prior planning or direction for it,\u201d its attorney general, Hamad Saif al-Shamsi, said on Thursday.<\/p>\n Arad foresees growing threats to civilian aviation from cyber-attacks and the malevolent use of AI, which could allow the targeting multiple planes simultaneously. But other experts pointed out there was no need for such sophistication to pose a threat.<\/p>\n Clarke said: \u201cWhether or not it involves an attacker who was self-radicalised or part of a group, keeping things simple is always the best way to carry out an attack, and this came pretty damn close.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"At about 9.30 on Wednesday morning local time, Tali Manes was taking her six-year-old daughter, Nina, to the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":914280,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[43,44,41,39,42,40],"class_list":["post-914279","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-headlines","tag-headlines","tag-news","tag-top-news","tag-top-stories","tag-topnews","tag-topstories"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/914279","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=914279"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/914279\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/914280"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=914279"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=914279"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=914279"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"Flydubai](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/10\/1795.jpg\")
Flydubai pilot tells Indian prime minister Modi that he couldn\u2019t \u2018let anyone die\u2019 \u2013 video<\/p>\n