Let’s be honest about something. Israelis are terrible on airplanes.
I say this with love, as someone who has flown in and out of Ben Gurion more times than I can count. The plane hasn’t even finished landing and half the cabin is already standing in the aisle, overhead bins open, bags coming down on people’s heads. The seatbelt sign is still on. The flight attendant is begging people to sit down. Nobody cares. Someone in row 34 is yelling to his cousin in row 12 about who’s picking them up. Someone else is negotiating with a flight attendant over a second sandwich like it’s a stall in Mahane Yehuda. There’s a guy organizing a minyan in the galley. And of course everyone claps when the wheels touch the ground, as if the pilot had a choice.
Every Israeli knows this. Every non-Israeli who has ever been on a flight to Tel Aviv knows this. Flight attendants on foreign airlines probably get hazard pay.
Well, after Wednesday, nobody gets to complain about any of that ever again. Because on Wednesday, a plane full of Israelis who couldn’t sit still saved their own lives.
What happened
On Wednesday morning, September 30, a flydubai flight from Dubai to Ben Gurion carrying 174 passengers, 27 of them children, was on its way to Israel. flydubai is the budget airline owned by the government of Dubai, one of the seven emirates that make up the United Arab Emirates. Since the Abraham Accords normalized relations between Israel and the UAE in 2020, flights between the two countries have become routine. Tons of Israelis fly through Dubai to get to Asia, or just go to Dubai to shop and sit by a pool.
The plane, a Boeing 737 MAX 8, took off from Dubai at 7:05 and was due at Ben Gurion around 9:30. It never got there. Around 8:21 in the morning, the Omani co-pilot stabbed the Indian captain and, according to suspicions, tried to crash the plane.
The plane started sending out emergency transponder codes. A transponder is the device that tells air traffic control who you are and where you are, and pilots can punch in specific four digit codes to signal trouble. The plane broadcast 7700, then 7500, then 7700 again. 7500 is the code for unlawful interference, which is aviation-speak for a hijacking. That’s the code that makes governments scramble fighter jets, and that’s what happened. The Israeli Air Force scrambled jets.
Meanwhile the plane fell out of the sky. According to published flight data, it dropped in under a minute from about 34,000 feet to about 17,000 feet, then kept swinging sharply up and down. Passengers described screaming, the plane shaking, the power cutting out. One passenger, Daniel Elmaliach, told Ynet she sent goodbye messages to her parents because everyone was sure they were going to die.
When the plane landed, photos showed a chunk of the rudder, the movable part of the tail fin that steers the plane left and right, simply missing. Investigators haven’t officially said when that happened, but that’s how violent this was.
The weapon was already in the cockpit
Here’s a detail that should keep airline security people up at night. The co-pilot didn’t smuggle a weapon on board. He didn’t have to. According to the preliminary investigation, he may have stabbed the captain with the emergency crash axe kept in the cockpit for breaking windows. The theory that he brought an axe aboard was ruled out, because all aircrew go through strict security checks before boarding.
So think about that. After 9/11, airlines spent billions reinforcing cockpit doors so that nobody could get in. The door worked exactly as designed. It kept the good guys out while the bad guy was already inside, with an axe that came standard with the airplane.
And it gets worse. According to Calcalist, the co-pilot held dual citizenship and was cleared to fly into Israel even though Oman has no diplomatic relations with Israel, which reportedly goes against the agreement between Israel’s Civil Aviation Authority and flydubai. Transportation Minister Miri Regev is now demanding an investigation into the aviation agreement with the UAE. So the cockpit door wasn’t the only screening system that failed.
The hero pilot
The first reports out of Israel said the captain was Emirati. He isn’t. The captain is Smit Machchhar, an Indian citizen, according to sources who spoke to India Today. He lives in Dubai and joined flydubai in June 2022, after about 11 years at the Indian low-cost carrier SpiceJet, where he held a series of senior roles.
And this man is a hero, full stop. He’d been stabbed, he was bleeding heavily from his head and hands, and he still managed the one thing that saved everybody: he got the cockpit door open. Yaniv Hayun, the first passenger to get inside, said the stabbed captain was lying right by the door, which made it hard to push open, and concluded that the captain opened it for them before he collapsed.
According to the Indian Embassy in Riyadh, Machchhar is in stable condition in a Saudi hospital. Netanyahu called him a true hero. That’s a lot of years of boring, uneventful flights at a budget airline, and on Wednesday every one of them paid off. Somebody should buy that man a very nice dinner for the rest of his life.
Take a second to appreciate the cast of characters here. An Indian captain fights off an Omani co-pilot, on an Emirati airline, to save 174 Israelis, and they land in Saudi Arabia. That’s the whole Middle East in one cockpit.
The hero Israelis
Now we get to the good part.
The first miracle was a woman who got up to use the bathroom. Passenger Elad Shalom, flying home from Vietnam via Dubai with his wife and three daughters, told Ynet the big miracle was a woman who went to the bathroom near the cockpit, heard screaming from inside, and yelled to her husband.
Read that again. An Israeli woman got out of her seat when she probably wasn’t supposed to, and that’s why everyone on that plane is alive. I will never again roll my eyes at someone standing in the aisle. Never.
Then came Yaniv Hayun. By his own account, when he got into the cockpit he found the attacker on top of the instruments between the two seats, and nobody was in the pilot seats. He put the man in a chokehold and dragged him out, saying the co-pilot was trying to wreck the instruments to disable the plane. He called for other Israelis, two more guys jumped in to pin the attacker down, and then Hayun went back into the cockpit and pulled back on the yokes. The plane started to level out.
How does a random guy know to pull back on the yoke of a Boeing 737 MAX in a dive? He said the knowledge came from a surprising source: the TV show Air Crash Investigation. That’s the show known in North America as Mayday, which has spent over twenty years reconstructing plane crashes in detail. And here’s the kicker. flydubai already starred in one episode. The airline’s flight 981 crashed in Rostov, Russia in March 2016, killing all 62 passengers and crew.
As for who actually landed the thing: by sheer luck, off-duty flydubai pilots were flying as passengers. Hayun said he got help from two pilots sitting in first class, and that one of them told him he was taking control once the plane started to stabilize. According to Reuters, other pilots on board then landed the plane safely in Saudi Arabia.
Hayun met Netanyahu at the airport and apologized for showing up in a blood-stained shirt. Netanyahu told him he was the hero. For once I agree with Bibi.
Then Donald Trump got hold of the story. In the Oval Office, Trump told reporters that an Israeli plumber who had never flown a plane saved everyone thanks to watching Air Crash Investigation, and that the man was strong because plumbers lift pipes all day. He ended by noting the plumber happened to be Jewish. To be fair to Trump, he said more than once that this was the story he got from Bibi and he wasn’t sure it was true. But it checks out: Netanyahu later said on Fox News that Yaniv is, in fact, a plumber. A plumber. Every Israeli who ever called a plumber and waited three days for him to show up owes this man an apology.
Then there’s the dentist. Ynet identifies him as Musayev Shota. He threw himself on the attacker together with three other Israelis, and he was the only medical professional on board. What I love about his story is this: he told Ynet he didn’t run forward to give medical aid, he ran forward to fight the terrorist. Only after they’d tied the attacker up, hands and feet, did he turn to the stabbed captain and get the bleeding to stop. That’s an Israeli right there. Fight first, then fix.
Calcalist reported that Tzvika Menes, CEO of Barak Leumi, Bank Leumi‘s underwriting company, was on the flight and was involved in subduing the attacker. A guy who prices bond offerings for a living, wrestling a terrorist in a cockpit. Another passenger who helped, Asaf Rajuan, said in a statement released by President Herzog’s office that he felt helpless and suspended in midair, and that it was all survival instinct.
Defense Minister Israel Katz called it an attempted jihadist attack, foiled by several Israeli passengers who broke into the cockpit, subdued the attacker with their own hands and returned control of the plane to another crew of pilots on board.
The plane landed safely at Tabuk in Saudi Arabia.
A potential 9/11, averted
Let’s be careful here, because this is still under investigation. But it’s not me saying this. Israel’s security establishment, led by the Mossad, assessed with high probability on Wednesday evening that the co-pilot planned a suicide attack and to crash the plane with everyone aboard. The possibility that he planned to fly the plane into Israeli territory and carry out the attack there has not been ruled out.
That second possibility is the one that should scare you. A fully fueled 737 aimed at Tel Aviv. A senior Israeli official described it as an attempted spectacular attack in the style of September 11.
To be fair, there’s another possibility on the table. Early on, a senior military source said it looked like the co-pilot was trying to commit suicide with the plane, and it was unclear whether the motive was mental illness or nationalism. That would put this closer to Germanwings 9525 in 2015, when a co-pilot locked his captain out of the cockpit and flew an Airbus into the French Alps, killing all 150 people on board. The difference is that most of the people on this flight were Israelis, on their way to Israel. As of now, Israeli investigators are leaning toward terror.
What we know about the guy is thin. An Omani official confirmed to CBS News that the attacker was born in Oman and holds Omani citizenship. He had worked for flydubai for about a year. According to an Israeli source, he had never landed in Israel before. The captain told passengers the co-pilot was 39 with two kids. No authority has released his name, so I’m not going to guess.
So who’s behind it?
My first thought was Iran. It’s always Iran. And this time I’m not the only one saying it. A spokesperson for the Saudi Embassy in Washington, Hessa Alyahya, said authorities were waiting to determine whether this was a dispute between the pilots or an act sponsored by Iran or the Houthis, the Iranian-backed militia in Yemen that has been firing missiles at Israel for years. When the Saudis publicly name Iran, that tells you something. Israeli investigators are also examining whether Iran directed the co-pilot, though for now there is no proof. Mossad chief Roman Gofman has ordered a check into the co-pilot’s background and whether there was an infrastructure or handler behind him.
In fairness, flydubai says the reasons are still unknown and has warned against premature speculation, and the UAE’s civil aviation authority, which is investigating, asked the public not to circulate unofficial information. So consider what follows my opinion, clearly labeled.
Iran has the motive. It wants dead Jews, it wants the Abraham Accords to collapse, and an Emirati airliner full of Israelis falling out of the sky would serve both goals at once. Oman is also relevant context. It’s the Gulf state that has historically been closest to Tehran and has spent years acting as the go-between for Iran and the West. That doesn’t prove anything about this guy. It’s context.
And there’s another theory in the Israeli press that fits just as well. Political sources claim the attacker wanted to undermine the Abraham Accords, which is why he chose an Emirati airline. That doesn’t require Iran at all. It could be one guy radicalized online. We don’t know yet.
The timing
Now let’s talk about when this happened.
Israel’s elections for the 26th Knesset are set for October 27. That’s less than four weeks from now. A mass-casualty attack on a plane full of Israelis, weeks before an election, would have shaken this country to its core and changed what people were voting about. I think it’s a fair question whether anyone was thinking about that. But I want to be straight with you: I’ve seen no reporting connecting this attack to the election. That’s me asking the question, not me telling you the answer. And nobody can predict which way an attack like this would push Israeli voters, which is exactly why a foreign government might be tempted to try.
And then there’s the holiday. Wednesday was Chol HaMoed Sukkot, the intermediate days of the festival when Israeli families travel, which is why there were 27 kids on that plane. We’ve seen this movie before. Egypt and Syria attacked on Yom Kippur in 1973. Hamas attacked on Simchat Torah, October 7, 2023. Simchat Torah falls again this weekend, on Shabbat in Israel and Sunday in the diaspora. Our enemies love a Jewish holiday.
The Saudis were lovely. Mostly.
Here’s a subplot nobody saw coming. 174 Israelis spent the day stranded in Tabuk, Saudi Arabia, a country Israel has no diplomatic relations with. And when they got home, they were thanking the Saudis. Passengers told Ynet the Saudis were warm, hosted them well and took care of everything.
But the Saudis also had their limits. Some of the Israelis refused to board another flydubai plane, and only agreed after it was explained there was no choice, because the Saudis wouldn’t approve an Israeli rescue flight. There was also a proposal to bus the passengers from Tabuk to Eilat, but the Israelis didn’t agree and the Saudis didn’t approve it. In the end, the passengers boarded the flydubai replacement plane only after the Mossad approved its crew. Mossad background checks on your flight attendants. That’s where we are.
And yes, when they landed in Israel, they sang and clapped. Fine. This time you get to clap.
What happens now
flydubai has suspended its Israel flights for now, and says it will review the suspension as things develop. Israeli airlines haven’t been flying to Dubai, and Arkia and El Al are now preparing to go back, pending state and security approvals. Netanyahu says MBZ agreed that Israel would join the interrogation, and he expects the suspect to be moved to Dubai soon.
So here’s my takeaway. Next time you’re on a flight to Tel Aviv and some guy in sandals jumps up the second the wheels hit the runway, reaching over your head for his duty free bag while the flight attendant screams at him to sit down, just let it go. Smile at him. That restless, pushy, can’t-sit-still, mind-your-own-business-is-for-other-people energy is exactly what saved 174 lives on Wednesday.
A woman got up to pee and heard screaming. A plumber who watches plane crash shows on TV dragged a terrorist out of the cockpit. A dentist tackled first and stitched second. An Indian captain bleeding from his head opened a door. Two off-duty pilots took it from there. And everyone came home.
Chag sameach.
― Tom Robbins
