Ballina English Everything we know so far about flight FZ1073: about 4,300 metres of...

Everything we know so far about flight FZ1073: about 4,300 metres of descent in 29 seconds, the wounded captain, passengers entering the cockpit and the emergency landing in Tabuk, Saudi Arabia

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Information as of 1 October 2026, updated with the latest developments of the day. The investigation is ongoing and no preliminary report has been published.

A Boeing 737 MAX 8 lost thousands of feet of altitude within seconds, transmitted the code 7500 for unlawful interference and diverted to Saudi Arabia. The Indian captain, Smit Machchhar, was seriously wounded, and passengers and other crew members intervened in the cockpit. On 1 October Saudi Arabia’s Interior Ministry confirmed an assault by the co-pilot on the captain, and the co-pilot was flown to Abu Dhabi. Netanyahu later said the co-pilot had undergone radical Islamist indoctrination; that is his own assertion, not a finding of the Saudi or Emirati investigation. The Emirati authorities are also examining the possibility of a terrorist motive, but the motive has not been officially established and some of the most important questions remain without a definitive answer.

On Wednesday, 30 September 2026, flydubai flight FZ1073 left Dubai for Ben Gurion Airport near Tel Aviv. The aircraft took off at 07:05 local time, 20 minutes behind its scheduled 06:45 departure, and climbed to about 34,000 feet. A little over two hours later the situation changed: sharp descents, two emergency codes and a landing in Tabuk, Saudi Arabia, not in Israel. More than 170 people survived.

This article separates what has been documented technically, what the company and the regulator say, what officials and passengers assert, and what remains open.

The latest developments of 1 October

Saudi Arabia’s Interior Ministry said the preliminary Saudi investigation, with the participation of a UAE security team, showed an assault by the co-pilot on the captain, causing various injuries to both. The ministry said the co-pilot left for Abu Dhabi with a security team after being medically cleared to travel, CNN reports. In the part of the statement that was read, the word “stabbing” does not appear.
The UAE Ministry of Foreign Affairs said the Attorney General has formed a specialised team to investigate the causes and motives, and maintained the UAE’s jurisdiction over the case. The Emirates praised the swift response and cooperation of the Saudi authorities.
Netanyahu told Fox News the co-pilot “underwent Islamist radical indoctrination”, according to personal information about him that emerged during questioning, and that it was very likely he intended to bring the plane down and was suicidal. He added that he was not drawing final conclusions. A day earlier, speaking to CBS, he had said the motive was not known.
Two Israeli security officials told Reuters that Israel’s preliminary assessment is that the co-pilot probably acted alone. An Israeli security source told BBC Arabic that an inquiry led by Mossad has preliminary findings pointing to an intent to bring the aircraft down. Another Israeli official said Israel is not receiving from the Saudis all the information it wants.
A regional official familiar with the investigation said every scenario is being examined, from terrorism to mental illness.
The Indian mission said the captain is in good condition and recovering; India’s ambassador to the UAE, Deepak Mittal, visited him in hospital. Israel announced heroism awards for four Israeli passengers. flydubai has suspended all flights to Israel.

These are statements by the parties involved; none of them is a conclusion of the Emirati investigation. For the claim of radicalisation, the claim of suicidal intent and the motive, the source is Netanyahu, as relayed by Reuters and CBS.

What flydubai itself has confirmed

The company says a physical altercation took place in the cockpit and that the aircraft was secured by on-duty flydubai crew travelling on board, who diverted it and landed it in Tabuk. It said the passengers and crew are safe and that the motives are not known, and it urged everyone not to speculate. The UAE General Civil Aviation Authority (GCAA) described the event as a security incident that was brought under control, with injuries among the crew. Tabuk airport said the captain and the first officer were taken to hospital.

In their statements, neither flydubai nor the GCAA uses the word “stabbing” or speaks of an attempt to bring the aircraft down. The Saudi Interior Ministry later spoke of an assault by the co-pilot on the captain, with injuries to both, but not of an attempt to crash the aircraft.

Video bonus

The aircraft and the people on board

The aircraft has been identified as a Boeing 737 MAX 8 registered A6-FKF, according to Flightradar24 as cited by Airways. Sources speak of 174 people on board; it is not always clear whether the figure includes the crew. Migflug mentions 27 children. According to Israel’s Foreign Ministry, those on board came from Israel, India and the Emirates, and the US State Department said four held American citizenship.

Timeline based on flight data

All times are in UTC (the Emirates are four hours ahead), according to Flightradar24.

03:05 — departure from Dubai, climb to about 34,000 feet.

05:21 — a steep descent begins, followed by a sharp climb and a second steep descent.

05:28:48 — the transponder begins transmitting 7700, the international general-emergency code, along the border between Saudi Arabia and Jordan.

05:33 — the aircraft has stabilised at about 15,000 feet; its altitude stays roughly there for the rest of the flight.

05:35 — the code changes to 7500, indicating unlawful interference. The aircraft briefly enters Jordanian airspace, turns 180 degrees and heads for Tabuk. Near the airport the code returns to 7700.

05:44 — controllers in Tabuk receive the request for an emergency landing (08:44 local time).

06:45 — landing in Tabuk. The last ADS-B signal is at 06:58.

The flight lasted about three hours and 40 minutes; 84 minutes passed between the first descent and the landing. Two Al Jazeera articles give slightly different times for some moments; Flightradar24’s times are used here.

A person who listened to the communications told AP that the pilot’s voice was shaking as he called “mayday” and said a hijacking was under way. The person was not named and the claim has not been officially confirmed.

How much altitude the aircraft lost

According to Flightradar24 data, cited by NBC News, the aircraft lost about 14,125 feet (4,305 metres) in 29 seconds. Reuters, as relayed by Airways, speaks of nearly 14,000 feet in less than 30 seconds. This is the shortest documented segment, not the total altitude loss.

Other sources give different values: Al Jazeera nearly 14,000 feet in under 30 seconds; AP from 33,000 to 17,000 feet in about a minute; CNN 17,400 feet in under two minutes; Aviation Herald, via Migflug, from 34,000 to about 19,000 feet in about 90 seconds, some 130 nautical miles north-east of Tabuk. They measure different parts of a manoeuvre that also included an intermediate climb. Flightradar24 has published the ADS-B data, so the intervals can be reconstructed.

The claim that “another 40 seconds would have been enough for the aircraft to crash” is not supported by the published data. To prove it, one would need the height above terrain, the rate of descent second by second and the trajectory, and none of these has been published. All that is known is that from 05:33 the aircraft stayed at roughly 15,000 feet and flew for more than an hour.

AP reports that the descent was so violent that the rudder broke away. A specialist named Murphy, cited by CNN, said the fixed vertical part of the tail gave the aircraft directional stability. Arik Zer, a former head of flight security at Shin Bet, assessed that the violent dive caused the damage; this is an assessment, not an investigative finding.

What happened in the cockpit, according to officials and passengers

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said one pilot stabbed the other with a knife and then tried to bring the aircraft down. Gulf News describes this as the official Israeli version, not a finding of the Emirati investigation. The stabbing of the captain has been widely reported and is supported by passenger accounts and by descriptions of footage in reputable news outlets. Saudi Arabia has officially confirmed an assault by the co-pilot on the captain; flydubai has not used the word “stabbing” and the UAE has not described it in an investigative conclusion.

Netanyahu’s spokesman told Reuters that the captain, covered in blood on the floor, managed to press the switch that releases the cockpit door, which allowed passengers and crew to intervene. Israel’s Foreign Ministry repeated this. Netanyahu said on CBS that the suspect was not stabilising the aircraft but trying to tamper with the equipment.

Yaniv Hayun, identified by Netanyahu as the passenger who entered the cockpit, said the door was hard to open because the stabbed pilot was lying behind it, and that three other passengers helped. According to the BBC, as cited by Northeast Times, he said he caught the attacker in a chokehold and dragged him out. He also said that, as he was walking towards the cockpit, the aircraft went into a dive and threw him sideways. Passenger Musaev told CNN that when he reached the cockpit he found the attacker on top of the pilot, continuing to stab him. Yitzhak Lieber sent a video in which he said the wounded pilot had been given help and the attacker had been tied up; Asaf Rajuan, in a video after the co-pilot was overpowered, said they were near Tabuk and everyone was fine except the pilot. A passenger told CBS there was also a doctor on the aircraft.

Passengers described deep fear. Alevi told NBC about screams, people running, panic and blood. Motti Cohen Or, 70, said he heard a woman shout that someone was stabbing someone in the cockpit, before the dive. Dalia Shpigel told Haaretz that some of those seated at the front broke down the cockpit door. That account differs from the version in which the door was opened from the inside and reflects one passenger’s perception; only the investigation can reconstruct the moment precisely.

How the door was opened, what weapon was used and how it got on board remain open questions. Migflug speaks of a pocket knife, without official confirmation.

Who landed the aircraft

flydubai speaks of on-duty flydubai crew travelling on board. Al Jazeera writes of a second pair of flydubai pilots on board, while CNN and Migflug refer to off-duty pilots among the passengers. According to Netanyahu, as cited by Reuters, other pilots landed the aircraft. It is not publicly clear who took final command, or whether they are the same people.

Captain Smit Machchhar

The captain is Smit Machchhar, an Indian national, as identified by India’s embassy in Saudi Arabia. The embassy said he was in stable condition; Gulf News reports that he underwent surgery. Early versions wrongly described him as Emirati.

According to Gulf News, he was born in Mumbai. According to his LinkedIn profile, cited there, he worked at SpiceJet from June 2011 to June 2022 and reached the rank of Senior Commander and Line Training Captain, a role he had held since November 2020. There he logged more than 9,500 hours, of which more than 6,400 as commander. He joined flydubai in June 2022 and his profile lists 9,750 hours on the Boeing 737-800 and 737 MAX 8/9. According to Reuters, as cited by Gulf News, he had been expected to join his family’s textile business and became interested in aviation at the age of 19; he trained as a pilot in New Zealand.

Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi called him a hero. President Droupadi Murmu praised his composure. Netanyahu said he saved the lives of 174 people, and Donald Trump also called him a hero. These are political assessments, not investigative conclusions.

The first officer

The first officer has been reported as an Omani national. An Israeli official said so to Reuters, while an unnamed Omani official told CBS News that he was born in Oman and holds Omani citizenship. As of 1 October flydubai had not released the pilots’ names and his identity had not been officially published by the Emirates or Saudi Arabia. Netanyahu said he was being questioned in Saudi Arabia. The Saudi Interior Ministry then said he left for Abu Dhabi with an Emirati security team after being medically cleared to travel; according to CNN, the captain also left for Abu Dhabi with the same team. Netanyahu had said he expected the co-pilot to be transferred to the Emirates and that Israel would take part in questioning him.

An anonymous pilot, cited by Israel’s Channel 16, described the co-pilot as a religious extremist and said he had joined flydubai about eight months earlier. This claim comes from a single, unnamed person and has not been verified by any authority.

Oman has no diplomatic relations with Israel. CNN notes that it is not clear how this pilot obtained permission to fly to Israel, and an Israeli official has raised the question of why the crew included a pilot from a state with no relations with Israel. Nationality is a biographical fact; it is not proof of motive.

The motive: what is asserted and what has not been confirmed

As of 1 October the motive had not been established. Two investigative readings and one technical hypothesis are circulating.

Terrorism. Israeli Defence Minister Israel Katz described the event as an attempted jihadist terrorist attack and said initial information indicated the attacker intended to bring the aircraft down. Al Jazeera notes that he did not explain how he reached this conclusion. An Israeli official told NBC that the preliminary investigation strongly suggests this. This is an Israeli assessment, not a conclusion of the Emirati investigation. On 1 October Netanyahu added, on Fox News, that the co-pilot had undergone radical Islamist indoctrination, based on personal information that emerged during questioning; Reuters also reported that two Israeli security officials assess that he probably acted alone. No claim of radicalisation has been confirmed by the Emirates, Saudi Arabia or Oman.

Suicide. A senior Israeli military official said the possibility that the pilot tried to kill himself using the aircraft is also being investigated, and that it was not clear whether the motive was psychological or nationalist. Channel 14 reported a similar suspicion. On 1 October Netanyahu called the co-pilot “clearly suicidal”, adding that he was not drawing final conclusions.

A technical hypothesis. Former pilot Alon Prag, in his interview with N12, says the dive may have begun with the struggle itself: a large deflection of the control column can disconnect the autopilot, and pushing it forward lowers the nose. He presents it as a professional assessment. It explains a possible mechanism, not the motive, and does not rule out deliberate actions; without the recorders, it cannot be known.

Asked whether Iran was behind the event, Netanyahu said it is too early to say whether Iran is involved and that investigators would soon learn whether there were accomplices. Trump said the co-pilot was probably a terrorist or perhaps a “whack job”.

The investigation

The UAE Attorney General, Hamad Saif Al Shamsi, ordered an investigative team from the Public Prosecution. According to WAM, as cited by The National, the investigation will examine whether the event was linked to terrorist activity or purpose, or to prior planning or direction. The team is working in coordination with the GCAA. Under Emirati law, crimes committed on board aircraft registered there fall under the jurisdiction of its courts, wherever they occur. The Attorney General urged media and the public not to circulate unverified information; The National writes that early reports were full of inaccuracies.

So as of 1 October, the classification of the event as an act of terrorism was not an official conclusion of the investigation.

Israel is seeking to take part. Netanyahu said he had spoken with the President of the Emirates, Mohamed bin Zayed, who agreed that Israel could take part in questioning the suspect; Herzog said the two states will investigate the event together. Saudi Arabia, for its part, published an Interior Ministry statement on the preliminary investigation and the co-pilot’s transfer to Abu Dhabi; an Israeli official told Reuters that Israel is not receiving from it all the information it wants.

Marco Chan, a specialist at Kingston University, told CNN that investigators will first examine the flight data recorder and the cockpit voice recorder. As of 1 October no data from the recorders and no preliminary report had been published.

The cockpit door and the security question

Prag explains that cockpit doors have been reinforced since 9/11 and do not open easily from outside, and that the captain can unlock it with an electrical command without leaving his seat, but he admits he does not know this aircraft’s configuration. He said security checks for crews vary from state to state, and described the rescue as luck, because many things had to line up. All of these are his assessments, not findings.

Germanwings 9525 killed 150 people in 2015; investigators believe co-pilot Andreas Lubitz locked the captain out of the cockpit and deliberately flew the aircraft into a mountain in the French Alps. After it, Emirates and Etihad announced a rule requiring two people in the cockpit at all times, while Swiss later dropped it, arguing that it does not raise safety and brings additional risks. That rule protects when one pilot leaves the cockpit; it was not designed for the case in which both pilots are inside and one attacks the other. This is an explanatory comparison, not an investigative finding.

The landing, the return and the consequences

The passengers stayed in Tabuk until flydubai sent two replacement aircraft. According to Tabuk airport they departed at 17:40 local time and, according to Technology.org, reached Ben Gurion more than 10 hours after the emergency began. According to two security sources cited by Reuters, Saudi Arabia refused an Israeli request to allow Israeli military aircraft to collect the passengers; this is not an official Saudi statement. At Ben Gurion Netanyahu personally thanked the passengers, one of them still wearing a blood-stained shirt. Herzog said he would give heroism awards to four Israelis who helped overpower the co-pilot.

flydubai suspended flights to and from Israel for as long as the investigation continues and said the event does not affect the rest of its network. Emirates immediately suspended its codeshare with flydubai to Tel Aviv. Netanyahu ordered tighter security at Israeli and non-Israeli airlines.

During the day Hebrew media wrongly reported that another flydubai flight, FZ1081, had turned back; The Times of Israel, cited by Al Jazeera, said the error appeared to stem from confusion on tracking sites.

Context

The incident came a few days before the anniversary of 7 October and four weeks before Israel’s 27 October election. On 29 September Netanyahu had said Israel had signs that its enemies might attempt attacks before the election. Opposition leader Yair Lapid, after the event, said the security briefing he had received on the night of 29 September contained no similar sign, and accused voices close to the government of using the event politically. No source links the incident to that warning.

The UAE and Israel normalised relations in 2020; the aviation agreement provided for 28 weekly flights and cargo flights. Saudi Arabia and Oman have no formal relations with Israel, and Saudi Arabia has made normalisation conditional on Israel accepting a Palestinian state.

FZ1073 is not the first flydubai Dubai–Tel Aviv aircraft to land in Saudi Arabia: on 24 September 2025 FZ1125 landed in Riyadh for a passenger’s medical emergency. In May 2018 flydubai and the GCAA denied rumours of a hijacking of flight FZ301 Dubai–Kabul, saying there had been a problem with a passenger.

What is known for certain and what remains open

Known: FZ1073 lost altitude rapidly, transmitted 7700 and 7500, diverted and landed safely in Tabuk; flydubai confirmed a physical altercation in the cockpit; Saudi Arabia confirmed an assault by the co-pilot on the captain; the Indian captain was seriously wounded; the co-pilot was flown to Abu Dhabi; the UAE has opened an investigation, including whether the incident was linked to terrorism.

Remains open: the motive, and the Israeli assertion of radicalisation and suicidal intent, which has not been confirmed by the Emirates; whether it was a deliberate attempt to bring the aircraft down; whether the first dive was the result of a deliberate input, of the struggle, or both; the content of the recorders; how the weapon got on board; who took command; whether there was prior planning or accomplices; the official identity of the first officer.

What the investigation must reconstruct

Understanding what happened on FZ1073 depends on reconstructing a few minutes. Investigators must establish what happened between the two pilots before the conflict; who started the physical altercation; what weapon was used and how it got on board; when the captain was wounded; when the autopilot disconnected and what inputs were made to the control column; when and why the codes 7700 and 7500 were transmitted; how the door was opened and who entered first; who took command of the aircraft; how the tail was damaged; and what the first officer’s motive was.

Until the recorders and the investigation report are published, technical facts must be kept separate from testimony, testimony from claims, and claims from conclusions.