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It is not too difficult to imagine the thoughts of the 180-odd passengers and crew of Flydubai Airlines coming down on a steep dive from about 34,000 feet in a matter of under two minutes following a fight in the cockpit when the co-pilot tried to take control of the Boeing 737 jet and do whatever he had in mind. Mercifully there were two reserve pilots on board who steadied the plane that had plunged more than 16,000 feet and landed safely in Saudi Arabia.
Only proper and unbiased investigations will tell the real truth about what really happened to the Dubai to Tel Aviv flight including the mindset of the co-pilot who wanted to commandeer the passenger jet. With social media transmitting conspiracy theories at lightning speed, the world is left with no option than to stare with some disbelief at some of the things that have already started coming out. The main theory was that the cockpit fight on Flight 1073 was an Israeli operation intended to blame regional adversaries and bring the United States into a broader conflict.
Another was a deep fake narrative with help of AI that the botched attempt was the handiwork of the Mossad of Israel and India’s RAW, Research and Analysis Wing. Just why the two intelligence agencies would cooperate on this is what any demented mind would want others to ponder about. The fact that many of the passengers were Israeli Jews and the Pilot who fought off his colleague was an Indian national hardly makes for a Mossad-RAW modus operandi. Surely the agencies must have better things to worry about. Cross border terrorism comes to mind first.
On the 25th anniversary of 9/11 or the terror attack on America of September 11, 2001, the world is sure of only one thing: that it is still fighting hard to come to terms with a scrouge that simply refuses to go away. On October 7 Israel will be remembering what happened three years ago when about 1200 of its citizens were brutally slaughtered by terrorist scums who forgot that the Jewish State will come after them in a way they never imagined. The result: a savage comeback that left Gaza in ruins with some 70,000 dead.
Twenty-five-years after what happened in New York, Virginia and Pennsylvania, the world is still left with memories of Osama bin Laden, Ayman al Zawahiri and many more of their ilk. First unconfirmed reports speak of the “extremist” co-pilot had on his social media handle videos of al Zawahiri and another notorious al Qaeda suicide bomber Humam Khalil Abu Mulal al Balawi who had killed six CIA personnel in 2009. And at a time when some world leaders are obsessed with Iran and seeing a Tehran link behind every shadow, nations would want to know if the latest horror-cum-terror in the sky was an isolated case of terrorism or of the organized variety.
The scary Flydubai Airlines incident has come at a wrong time to a Middle East that is already reeling under the Iran war, the closure of the Strait of Hormuz and reports of fresh escalations on the anvil. Israeli Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, has said that the Co-pilot who has been identified as a citizen of Oman had undergone “Islamist radicalization” and that investigations are going on to see “… whether he was sent, and whoever has sent him will pay a very heavy price”. President Donald Trump has maintained that early information suggested a link with Tehran and that United States will “hit them very hard” if found that Iran was behind the whole thing.
The terror attacks of 9/11 have indeed left an imprint on airlines and airline security. Hardly anyone quibbles about the rigorous security checks carried out at airport, however irritating they may be. That should also be applicable to airline pilots and staff travelling on commercial jets as there are conflicting versions on what was used in the cockpit fight: was it a knife as first reported or a “crash axe” that is in the cockpit used by pilots in emergencies. If it is indeed a knife that would raise issues of security checks and why special privileges to cabin crew when passengers are prevented from carrying aboard even a safety pin.
Investigators are bound to be more about background checks on the men and women who are recruited and entrusted to fly passenger jets. If preliminary reports are anything to go by, there are a lot of troubling questions for which clear cut answers must be forthcoming, the first of which why the airline hired someone who was relieved from his earlier job or assigned to desk duties because of subsequent checks and behavior. Condemning an airline because of a random incident may not be fair, but missing red flags along the way does not exactly boost confidence levels of passengers, especially those who are “scared” of flying to start with.
Disclaimer: The opinions and views expressed in this article/column are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views or positions of South Asian Herald.
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