On the morning of September 30, flydubai flight FZ1073, a Boeing 737 MAX 8, left Dubai for Tel Aviv with 174 passengers aboard, 27 of them children. About two and a half hours into the flight, the first officer attacked the captain, Smit Machchhar, an Indian national. The aircraft dropped roughly 17,000 feet in one to two minutes. The crew squawked a general emergency, then the hijack code, and Israeli fighter jets were scrambled. The plane diverted to Tabuk in northwest Saudi Arabia and landed safely. Everyone on board survived.

The official account came together over the following days. The UAE called it a terrorist attack and said the co-pilot struck the captain with the cockpit’s crash axe, an emergency tool kept on the flight deck. According to the Associated Press, sources identified him as Hamam al-Hammami, an Omani national born in the UAE who had traveled to Syria. Oman had reportedly barred him from flying over concerns that he had adopted extremist views and moved him to an administrative job at Oman Air. flydubai hired him anyway. A Gulf diplomat said the pre-hiring checks looked for criminal convictions, not signs of radicalization. Security services from four regional countries, assisted by the United States and other Western governments, are investigating. So far they say they have found no link to a militant group, which points to a man acting alone.

The rescue, as officially described, went like this. A spokesman for Prime Minister Netanyahu said the wounded captain opened the cockpit door himself. Two flydubai pilots traveling as passengers, one South African and one New Zealander, took over the controls, while crew and passengers restrained the attacker. One of them, an Israeli plumber named Yaniv Hayoun, said he put the co-pilot in a chokehold and dragged him out of the cockpit. Netanyahu embraced Hayoun when the passengers reached Tel Aviv. Other reports say the cabin crew used the emergency access code to get into the cockpit; that has not been confirmed.

The incident also landed in the middle of an Israeli election campaign; Israelis vote on October 27. The day before the flight, during a visit to Tel Nof air base, Netanyahu warned that there were “indications that, ahead of the elections, our enemies will try to attack us.” He named no country and no target. After the attack, Defense Minister Israel Katz said those warnings had been based on intelligence, and Netanyahu pointed to Iran and its proxies as bent on stepping up attacks on Israelis abroad.

That claim was quickly disputed from inside Israel. Security officials told Hebrew-language media that they had no knowledge of any specific attack threat. Opposition leader Yair Lapid, who received a security briefing from Netanyahu the night before the flight, said nothing resembling the plane incident came up, and that the warning he was shown was more than two years old and had nothing to do with aircraft. Investigators, for their part, have so far found no sign that any state or organization directed the attack.

I believe Netanyahu is using this incident to boost his election prospects. Three weeks before Israelis go to the polls, a prime minister who warned of unnamed enemies got a dramatic attack, an Israeli hero to embrace when the passengers reached Tel Aviv, and a fresh reason to point at Iran, even though his own security officials say they had no warning of a plot like this. I am not alone in seeing the political calculation. Daniel Levy, a former Israeli government adviser, told Al Jazeera the story could shift voters’ attention toward Iran and away from domestic problems. Not everyone agrees it will work: Ahron Bregman of King’s College London argued the attack caught Netanyahu as off guard as everyone else and doubted he would benefit. But the speed with which he and Katz turned the episode into proof of their warnings tells me where their priorities lie.

Then there is the question of how al-Hammami got into a flydubai cockpit at all. A foreign pilot cannot simply show up and fly for a UAE airline. He needs a UAE residence visa sponsored by his employer, a license and medical certificate from the General Civil Aviation Authority, and, at some airlines, a police clearance from his home country. The UAE has some of the most capable security services in the Gulf, and since the Abraham Accords it has worked closely with Israel on intelligence and security. Yet a man reportedly grounded by his own national airline over extremist views passed through that system. According to his LinkedIn profile as reported by CNN, he even flew for Royal Air Maroc in between. A Gulf diplomat told the Associated Press that his pre-hiring checks looked for criminal convictions, not signs of radicalization, and it is still unclear whether Oman ever shared its concerns with anyone. That is either an extraordinary failure of vetting by a country that prides itself on security, or a sign that Gulf states do not share the very information that would stop a man like this. Either way, the UAE owes an explanation.

Israel’s side of the screening failed too. Under a 2023 law, Israeli authorities receive crew and passenger lists up to 48 hours before departure, and Haaretz reported that the Transportation Ministry and the Mossad are responsible for checking foreign flight crews. Netanyahu has acknowledged a “loophole” and promised tighter checks.

Important questions remain unanswered. How did a man grounded by his own country over extremism end up in the right-hand seat of an airliner? How did he get past Israel’s rule that foreign carriers keep pilots from countries without diplomatic relations, Oman among them, off flights into Israel? And what was his motive? Netanyahu himself said it was too early to say whether Iran was involved.

Those gaps have invited other explanations. A pilot who follows my interviews wrote to me with his. He believes the co-pilot was manipulated into the attack by handlers, and he names Israel as the likely culprit. Some of what he describes matches the public record: there were deadheading pilots on board, and the co-pilot was already known to security services. Other parts, including how the cockpit door was opened, go beyond or differ from what has been reported, and his central claim rests on inference rather than evidence. I present his letter as he wrote it so readers can weigh it against the record above.

Hi Larry,

Here is my guess as to what happened.

First of all, I was involved when 6-7 DEA undercover agents spent many months befriending and then encouraging a US ex-pat living in the Caribbean ( who had not only never used any illegal drugs, but also had no previous criminal record) to fly a load of drugs into the Marathon Florida Keys Airport. On board his expensive private turbine aircraft were the 6-7 undercover DEA agents, who were not carrying any ID, along with the smuggled drugs. I was there. (it’s a helluva story if you want to hear it some time)

Ever since, EVERY TIME something happens like 911, the young man accused of shooting Charlie Kirk, etc. Have you noticed something that ALL of these events have in common? Law enforcement magically happens to have the “suspects” already in their files, often on a watch list. Law enforcement ALWAYS knows who these “suspects” were BEFORE the incident. And then magically, evidence just happens to appear that totally convinces the public that the “suspect” is the guilty person(s). It’s the look here, don’t look there theme. Investigation is over, they got their man, so there’s no need to investigate further.

EVERY one of these people is set up in advance to either do something, or to be the patsy. Sometimes it might only take several weeks, or maybe even many months , to convince somebody to do an incident, and then stage an incident with the blame placed somewhere else , and with an air-tight criminal case pre-planned. Maybe I’m cynical, but I was involved in that DEA incident.

So… I absolutely believe the co-pilot who attacked the pilot of the FlyDubai incident was a set up. Notice how he just happened to already be on security services radar? How convenient! And how extra pilots just happened to be on board? Again how convenient! Those backup pilots could be, and probably were, not part of this incident. The fewer people in on something, the less chance of something leaking. How long did Israel (who else?) spend working on that co-pilot to get him to do this? Weeks? Months? The co-pilot probably doesn’t even realize he was being set up by Israel.

Here’s how I guess this staged event went down. The co-pilot had planned (with his handlers help) the attack for that particular flight (so that backup pilots could accidentally be on that same flight. probably without any pre-knowledge of what was about to happen). When the pilot was attacked he would start screaming in pain, as well as calling out for help. Even over aircraft noise, the loud screams and calls for help would be heard by flight attendants thru the locked cockpit door. Senior flight attendants have a secret 6-digit code to unlock the cockpit door in an emergency. After entering the 6-digit emergency code, warning lights started flashing and warning horns went off in cockpit, signaling to the flight crew that someone was using emergency procedures to enter the cockpit. The light flashing and horn buzzing would continue for 30 seconds. After those 30 seconds the cockpit door would unlock for 5 seconds, giving time for someone to open the cockpit door.

During those 30 seconds, flight attendants would have brought the backup pilots forward. Flight attendants ALWAYS know when other pilots are on board, because flight crews are registered as a separate category of passengers ( because pilots always fly free while transferring to-from other locations, either flying to-from home, or to pick up a flight where they are the flight crew etc). So every flight attendant knows who every dead-heading flight crew is on every flight. The flight attendants would also pick some strong guy who is sitting towards the front of the plane (maybe he was given his seat location to conveniently be located close to cockpit door? (probably without having ANY knowledge of what was about to happen).

Pilot is attacked. He starts screaming out in pain, and yelling for help. Flight attendants enter 6-digit emergency code, while other flight attendants grab a strong looking man from near the front of the plane, and one or two dead-heading pilots, bringing them to the front of the plane. As soon as the 30 seconds have elapsed flight attendants open the unlocked cockpit door. Big strong Israeli guy ( it just has to be an Israeli…) enters cockpit along with 1-2 dead-heading pilots. Attacker is subdued, and backup flight crew takes control of the aircraft.

The pilot was strapped into his seat throughout the attack while fending off the attacker. Co-pilot, aka attacker, probably had removed his seatbelt and shoulder straps before attacking pilot, giving him more mobility during attack. After attack started, he probably got out of his seat to continue attack, and the pilot, desperate to stop the attack, slammed the controls forward to through attacker off-balance. It would not have took much of a dive to throw somebody off balance, or even to the floor, giving pilot a little time. Depending on how severe the dive was, it could have even thrown attacker upwards banging into overhead panels. Giving the pilot precious seconds to fight back before help arrived.

And get this. NOBODY on that flight, not even the attacker, has the slightest clue what just really happened. And when plane gets to Israel, the Son of Satan treats like the Israeli plumber like a national hero… AND who just happened to save his election (so he wouldn’t go to jail).

OK, so I’m cynical. I am not a betting man… but I’ll bet my own money that this IS what happened.

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