Flydubai co-pilot held as Saudi-led probe seeks cockpit attack motive

Tracking data shows FZ 1073 fell 17,000ft in under two minutes

The captain of flydubai flight FZ 1073 released his cockpit door while bleeding heavily from multiple stab wounds, allowing passengers and crew to gain entry and overpower his co-pilot — an Omani national who had attacked the captain in an apparent attempt to crash the plane, according to The Guardian. Other crew members stabilized the flight, and just before 11am local time on Wednesday the Boeing 737 Max made a safe emergency landing in Saudi Arabia. All 174 passengers on board escaped serious injury.

Flight-tracking data reconstructed what the crew confronted. Flightradar24 recorded the aircraft rapidly descending from its cruising altitude of about 34,000ft to 17,000ft in less than two minutes as it reached the Saudi-Jordanian border. Oliver Holmes, a Guardian reporter who once trained as a pilot, said investigators are likely to examine whether that sudden plunge explains why the plane eventually landed with part of its tail missing. “Before any government has made an announcement, these platforms can tell you something seriously wrong has happened,” Holmes said.

Saudi investigators detained the co-pilot upon landing and are cooperating with the United Arab Emirates, the United States, Oman and Israel to determine his reasons and potential affiliations, The Guardian reported. A day after the landing, the attacker’s motives remained unknown. William Christou, a Beirut-based reporter with The Guardian, said investigators are examining “whether it’s a terror attack, whether it had any previous planning or prior direction, and if it could be a lone wolf attacker, who was perhaps motivated by anti-Israel hate, but wasn’t necessarily linked to any larger organisation or state.”

Competing official characterizations have followed. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu told Fox News it was “too early to say” whether there was any Iranian involvement, while claiming the co-pilot had previously undergone radical Islamist indoctrination and was suicidal. Israel’s ambassador to the UN, Danny Danon, described the incident as a “terror attack.” Two Israeli security sources told Reuters they had not yet found Iranian involvement. flydubai suspended all its flights to and from Israel after the landing and warned against “premature speculation.”

The episode unfolded weeks ahead of what The Guardian described as “knife-edge Israeli elections,” with polls showing Netanyahu’s current coalition unlikely to meet the threshold needed to form a government and no clear path to power for his rivals, The Guardian reported. The Strait of Hormuz remained closed as a result of what The Guardian characterized as the “US-Israel assault on Iran,” with conflict in Yemen resurgent. Days before the attack, Netanyahu warned that Israel faced an unspecified attack risk during the election period — an assertion questioned by political opponents; the Israeli military subsequently confirmed they had no specific intelligence of an anticipated attack. “Most people interpreted that as Netanyahu trying to stir up his base by presenting himself as Mr. Security,” Christou said. Holmes noted the landing site added to the sensitivity: Saudi Arabia does not officially have diplomatic relations with Israel.

On Thursday, The Guardian reported, the Israeli foreign ministry began briefing diplomats that the incident was an attempt to drive a further wedge between the UAE and Israel — a relationship already strained by leaks suggesting Netanyahu was personally alerted to the 7 October attacks by the UAE president a week before it took place, something the president has denounced as “an absolute lie.”

The Guardian’s own account of covering the story illustrates how contested the details remained. The Israeli government originally minimized the incident, describing it as a fight between pilots, while another early report suggested the plane had to land because of a fight between Ukrainian and Russian co-pilots. “I was sifting through so much misinformation,” Christou said. “The story changed very quickly, and moment to moment.” Cabin footage circulated purporting to show images from inside the plane; The Guardian said each clip it incorporated into its reporting had to be verified, given the potential for AI-generated fakes. “It was very, very tricky to untangle what was happening,” Holmes said.

Taz Ali, who led The Guardian’s live blog on the incident, said readers connected the episode to the wider Middle East crisis. “Readers are making connections with what’s happening in the Middle East in general, and you’re trying to answer their questions, first with very scant detail and later with a deluge of information, much of which is proved to be inaccurate,” Ali said. The recent 25th anniversary of the September 11 attacks deepened the resonance, she added: “Especially with the anniversary happening so recently, those memories would have been so raw in people’s minds when they came to this story.”