The second officer of FlyDubai flight FZ1073 smuggled a small knife on board the passenger flight from Dubai to Tel Aviv and used it to temporarily disable or stun his captain, Smit Machchhar, before inflicting serious injuries on his fellow pilot with an axe stored in the cockpit for emergencies, an aviation security consultant said.
Shannon Wandmaker, the Brisbane-based director of CW Aviation Security Consulting, said his aviation sources had shared details of the desperate fight for control of the Boeing 737 over Saudi Arabia on Wednesday between the Indian pilot and his deputy, who is reportedly a citizen of Oman, an affluent but deeply conservative Islamic state.
As the two men fought over the aircraft, it plunged so fast that the rudder was damaged, adding to the challenge of a stand-by FlyDubai pilot who happened to be travelling in the main cabin, Mr Wandmaker said he was told. The security consultant emphasised that his information was based on incomplete reports and could change as the full account of what happened was disclosed by aviation officials.
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“They were probably very lucky for a couple of reasons,” he said. “Only the rudder was damaged and the aircraft was still flyable. And the captain was available to take control of the aircraft. My understanding is the (original) captain was in no state to fly the aircraft. They were very, very lucky they had a qualified captain from FlyDubai there.
“If either of those things weren’t in place then I think the situation could be very different. If you’re in a position where you have a captain incapable of flying and the first officer restrained, there is only one outcome from that if nobody else is able to fly the aircraft.”
The 174 people on board were from Israel and other countries, according to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who said Captain Machchhar fought back against his attacker and opened the locked cockpit door, allowing passengers and crew to enter and restrain him.
A video taken from the plane shows a badly bloodied and dazed Captain Machchhar lying on the floor with an oxygen mask over his mouth. A man in what appears to be a FlyDubai pilot’s uniform is at his feet, tied up and not moving.
Passenger aircraft have what is called a “crash axe” in their cockpits to use to break out of the plane if it crashes. The axes used to be stored in the main cabins but were shifted to the pilots’ area after the 9/11 terrorist attacks in the US 25 years ago, Mr Wandmaker said.
Publicly available flight data shows about two hours after taking off the plane fell from 34,000 to about 20,000 feet in a short time, rapidly gained altitude, then dived again to around 15,000 feet.
Seven minutes after the first dive the plane’s transponder — a type of radio transmitter — was set to 7700, the code for an emergency. Another seven minutes later it was set to 7500, the code for “unlawful interference”, which includes a hijacking. It was then switched back to 7700.
Passenger Zvika Meness told Israeli public broadcaster Kan News that he and other passengers tied the attacker up “with his own zip ties and with the multimedia headphones”.
TZAFRIA, ISRAEL – SEPTEMBER 30: Passengers carry luggage through the terminal corridor lined with waiting crowds and flags upon arriving on a Flydubai retrieval flight at Ben Gurion Airport on September 30, 2026 in Tzafria, Israel. This morning, a Flydubai flight from Dubai to Tel Aviv was diverted to Saudi Arabia after a violent altercation in the cockpit. Passengers told media outlets that a pilot was stabbed and temporarily lost control of the plane. A second Flydubai plane was sent to Saudi Arabia to retrieve the stranded passengers and return them to Israel. (Photo by Erik Marmor/Getty Images) Credit: Erik Marmor/Getty Images
