What the Flydubai Incident Reveals About When a Pilot Becomes the Threat

The facts about what happened aboard Flydubai flight 1073, from Dubai, UAE  to Tel Aviv, Israel on Sept. 30 are not in dispute. The plane, carrying more than 170 passengers, left the ground at 3:05 a.m. local time (11:05 p.m. EDT) to begin a planned three-hour and 35-minute journey, climbing to a cruising altitude of 34,000 ft., according to FlightRadar24, a live air traffic site. At 5:21 a.m., the co-pilot, an unnamed Omani national, attacked the pilot, an Indian national named Smit Machchhar, with what is being variously described as an axe or a knife.

The plane went into a steep dive, plummeting more than 14,000 ft. in 30 seconds, slinging screaming passengers from their seats. Bleeding profusely from cuts to his hands and head, Machchhar managed to send out three alerts to the ground: a so-called 7700 alarm, indicating a “general emergency;” then a 7500, indicating “unlawful interference;” then another 7700. More importantly, he was able to unlatch and open the locked cockpit door, tumbling into the galley area at the front of the plane, while still wrestling with his co-pilot. 

Two passengers and one flight crew member subdued the attacker and bound his hands with the cables from passenger headphones. In a case of good fortune, two reserve pilots were aboard the plane, there to relieve the prime crew when they landed in Tel Aviv. The pair raced to the cockpit, took the controls, and landed the plane safely in Tabuk, Saudi Arabia. Both of the prime pilots were taken to a local hospital, where Machchhar is being treated for his wounds, and the attacker was taken into custody, where he faced interrogation by Saudi law enforcement officers before being handed over to the UAE.

In an interview with Fox News, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said it was too soon to know if the co-pilot were acting in coordination with Iran, with which Israel is currently at war, in an act of organized terrorism, “but he obviously hated Israelis because he was going to kill about 170 of them on the plane, killing himself too.”

U.S. President Donald Trump on Thursday suggested the co-pilot may be linked to Iran, "based on what [he's] hearing," but did not provide any details.

Machchhar, meantime, is being hailed a hero on the international stage. “Captain Smit Machchhar has shown the world the highest form of courage,” Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi posted on X. “Without fearing for his own life, he fought valiantly and prevented another 9/11 like attack from happening.”

What’s far less clear in the wake of the near mass casualty is how it happened in the first place. The attacker had been with the airline for eight months—coming aboard before the war in Iran began. Was he nonetheless collaborating with Iran, or was he a self-radicalized lone wolf? What kind of screening do commercial pilots worldwide go through to ensure mental stability and to rule out terrorist or criminal links? How did a weapon make it aboard the plane in the first place? And are the locked and hardened cockpit doors—which went into use on airlines worldwide after 9/11—almost too secure, keeping attackers out, yes, but preventing rescuers from getting in to stop a similar incident between pilots?

What security measures are in place to ensure pilots don't present a risk?

The early reports that the weapon used in the attack was a knife raised questions, since the popular belief is that pilots and crew go through the same security screening passengers do. But that’s not the case, according to experts.

“Most of the pilots and flight crew will go through what's called the ‘crew member access point,’” says Jeff Price, professor of aviation at the Metropolitan State University of Denver, and author of the book Practical Aviation Security. “They’re called ‘known crew members.’ A large part of this is based on trust. They have access to the airplane and if they wanted to sabotage it, they probably could.” Subsequent investigations revealed that the co-pilot did not have a knife, but instead used what’s known as a crash axe, a tool kept in the cockpit for use, as its name suggests, as a means of escape or rescue in the event of an accident.

Other kinds of screening—for mental health, criminal background, and potential association with terrorist or other criminal organizations—is more rigorous, but standards vary from country to country. “A new pilot does go through a criminal history record check to see if they've ever been arrested or convicted of a set of 28 different crimes,” says Price of the U.S. process. “They also go through what's called a security threat assessment, which is a TSA check to see if they are on any sort of list that might require them to not receive a badge to the airline, which means they can't fly for the airline.”

Psychological profiling is much less strict, basically operating on the honor system—honor being a quality that somebody with an eye toward bringing down a plane would not be likely to possess in abundance. “There's not a federal requirement for that other than their flight medical [tests], in which case they're given a questionnaire that basically says, ‘Are you mentally stable and do feel okay?’” says Price.

International standards do call for, at a minimum, this level of mental health screening, but standards and enforcement vary from jurisdiction to jurisdiction.

Concerns over cockpit barriers intended to close a 9/11 security gap

As for locked cockpit doors, they can be opened from the outside provided that somebody knows the combination—which, outside of the pilots themselves, only firefighters, police, and other first responders do. That, Price admits, does raise the question of the doctrine of unintended consequences, with the post-9/11 security measures solving one problem while creating another.

Additionally, in the U.S., new Federal Aviation Administration rules require what is called a “secondary cockpit barrier” on all newly-manufactured commercial planes delivered to U.S. airlines. The rule, which doesn’t apply to existing planes, is set to add an extra layer of security at the head of the plane and, hopefully, prevent any potential bad actors from gaining access to the cockpit. But again, what if the danger lies within the cockpit?

“Everything we did was to try and prevent access to the flight deck, which doesn't do a whole lot of good when the problem is coming from inside the house,” acknowledges Price, adding that “it’s a [matter of] risk-reward.”

On balance, the risk of another such mutinous crew member trying to commandeer a plane is less than the reward that comes from preventing hijackers from seizing the cockpits as they did aboard four flights 25 years ago. But the danger of an incident like yesterday’s ending catastrophically is decidedly nonzero.