A Near-Disaster on Flydubai
· The Atlantic
Today, somewhere over Saudi Arabia, the co-pilot of an Israel-bound Flydubai Boeing 737 stabbed the other pilot and pitched the nose of the plane toward the desert below. The jet descended 17,000 feet in two minutes, at an acceleration violent enough to make your phone and in-flight snack jump off your tray and be pinned to the ceiling. Other crew members and at least one Israeli passenger broke into the cockpit and subdued the assailant. Relief pilots then took over and landed the plane in Tabuk, Saudi Arabia. After a second Flydubai plane took the 174 passengers to Tel Aviv, one of the passengers who’d stormed the cockpit told Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu that his actions had been effective in part because he had watched the disaster-porn documentary series Mayday, about aviation catastrophes, and had known to pull back on the yoke.
Whether today’s near-disaster was terrorism or merely attempted mass murder depends on the attacker’s motive. Either way, it is a public-relations catastrophe for Flydubai, the budget cousin of the airline Emirates. Since the United Arab Emirates opened diplomatic relations with Israel in 2020, the airline has connected the two countries with few interruptions, even for acts of war and terror. Keeping that air route open and safe has taken a great deal of effort. Last year, I witnessed clever security engineering at Dubai’s Terminal 1: placement of the check-in desk for El Al, the Israeli carrier, adjacent to the desk for Iran’s Mahan Air. Anyone tempted to attack Israeli passengers would hit Iranian ones, and vice versa. Checked baggage costs extra, but the experience of being a human shield while waiting in line is complimentary.
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Mahan Air no longer flies into Dubai. U.S. sanctions have halted much of its operations, and Dubai had already curtailed its flights, on the grounds that Iran can fly either missiles into Dubai or commercial flights, but not both. Israel, by contrast, has emerged from the 2026 Iran war closer to the UAE, which has absorbed more Iranian attacks than any other country. Although the Arab countries of the region have been allied as the Gulf Cooperation Council since 1981, that alliance proved useless as soon as the missiles and drones started flying. But Israel responded as an ally, by sending defense systems and advisers. At least one Iranian strike during the early phases of the war hit near the Israeli consulate in Dubai. One possible political motive for the Flydubai incident would be to strain and punish the relationship between the two countries. (One of the few unambiguous winners today is Boeing. Its 737 MAX series was previously grounded when its software forced jets into fatal dives. Today, a human pilot instigated such a dive and tried to smash the 737’s instrument panel. The airframe held together even after approaching Mach 1.)
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The relationship between Israel and the UAE is unlikely to snap over a single attack. The relationship between the UAE and Netanyahu himself is more delicate. In the past several weeks, the president of the UAE, Mohammed bin Zayed Al Nahyan, was implicated in a report from Haaretz that severely damaged Netanyahu’s chances of remaining in office after next month’s Israeli election. The report alleged that days before the massacre of October 7, 2023, MBZ had personally warned Netanyahu that an attack was imminent but Netanyahu had done nothing to act on the warning. The UAE government at first refused to comment on the story. On Sunday, however, Netanyahu visited Abu Dhabi, and the AP reported that he asked MBZ to deny that he’d warned of an attack.
Yesterday, in New York, UAE Foreign Minister Abdullah bin Zayed did exactly that. “Sheikh Mohammed did not call Prime Minister Netanyahu and say there is going to be an attack on Israel,” Abdullah said in a meeting at the Council on Foreign Relations, calling his denial “categorical.” He said that using a leader-to-leader call to pass along secrets was “not our style,” and he left open the possibility that a warning had been passed between governments, if not between leaders. This denial releases some pressure on Netanyahu without absolving his government of its failures. (The pattern of warnings also matches Vivian Salama’s Atlantic report about a pre–October 7 warning from Egypt’s intelligence chief.)
The New York Times and others have reported that the first officer who allegedly tried to bring down the plane is an Omani national. (The injured captain, according to Netanyahu, is the Indian national Smit Machchhar.) Both are reportedly still in Saudi Arabia. The next part of the story will involve determining whether the pilot acted alone—not a good look for Flydubai, to have suicidal or terrorist pilots—or at someone’s behest. The latter possibility could, if confirmed, have serious implications, depending on who directed the attack. Many have a motive: Sunni jihadists (al-Qaeda or the Islamic State), Hamas, and of course Iran and its proxies. This Mayday moment will have huge implications if any of these groups are involved.