Claims that the Dubai–Tel Aviv flight was being flown by a Ukrainian and a Russian are false. Israeli sources later reported that the aircraft’s captain was from the UAE, while the co-pilot who started the fight was an Omani national.
Citing Israel’s Channel 12, a number of media outlets reported that the Flydubai flight from Dubai to Tel Aviv, which was forced to make an emergency landing on the morning of Sept. 30, had supposedly been piloted by a Ukrainian and a Russian, and that a fight between the two had caused the emergency. Social media users quickly picked up the story. Some Russian sources went further, claiming it was the Ukrainian who attacked the Russian national first — without, of course, offering any evidence or citing any sources.
However, according to updated information from senior Israeli officials, the fight was started by the co-pilot, “likely a native of one of the Persian Gulf states.” Flydubai flight FZ1073 departed Dubai for Tel Aviv with about 174 passengers on board, many of them Israelis. There were also 27 children on board. During the flight, the co-pilot, an Omani national, reportedly began stabbing the captain, a UAE native, with a knife. At around 9:30 a.m., the plane vanished from radar for half an hour, sharply raising alarm: Israel scrambled fighter jets and convened emergency meetings of its political and security leadership. Meanwhile, the aircraft went into a steep dive, losing more than 5,000 meters of altitude in two minutes. Realizing the scale of the threat, passengers and crew members forced their way into the cockpit and subdued the attacker. A relief crew traveling in the cabin with the passengers proved decisive, managing to stabilize the aircraft. At 10 a.m., the plane landed in Saudi Arabia, Israeli airspace was reopened, and another aircraft was sent to Riyadh to bring the passengers on to Tel Aviv. A member of Israel’s security establishment involved in assessing the situation said: “An extremely serious terror attack was averted.” The claim that the pilots were Russian and Ukrainian, attributed to Channel 12, was therefore not borne out: senior Israeli officials later clarified the facts, and local outlets such as Israel Hayom and the Jerusalem Post corrected their reporting.
We previously debunked claims that a Ukrainian pilot “hijacked” an F-16 and landed it at an airfield in Belarus.
