On Wednesday morning, a co-pilot aboard a Flydubai plane stabbed the captain in what is believed to have been a foiled attempt to crash the flight with more than 170 people on board, en route from Dubai to Israel’s Tel Aviv. As the plane plunged, within a minute, to half its altitude amid the commotion as it approached Jordanian airspace, the captain managed to unlock the door to the cockpit, and a group of passengers and crew members stormed inside and overpowered the attacker, who was reportedly attempting to damage the controls. The aircraft also emitted an emergency distress signal during the incident.
Another pilot on board managed to take control of the aircraft and land it safely in Saudi Arabia’s Tabuk. While the United Arab Emirates, the airline’s host country, has begun an investigation into what happened, Saudi authorities are questioning the co-pilot who allegedly attacked the captain. The attacker was also injured and is now in Saudi custody.
Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said the country would follow the investigation and “possibly participate”. Israel has claimed the incident on board the plane, the majority of whose passengers were Israeli, was a “terrorist” attack and an attempt to crash the aircraft. Meanwhile, the incident on board Flydubai flight FZ1073 has raised a host of uncomfortable questions in the civil aviation industry, chief among them: how safe is a commercial aircraft when one of its own pilots turns violent?
Twenty-five years ago, the September 11 attacks on the United States, which killed nearly 3,000 people, changed the civil aviation industry. That day, al-Qaeda-affiliated hijackers took control of four commercial planes as they were in the air, crashing two into the twin towers of New York’s World Trade Center on Manhattan island, and another into the Pentagon. A fourth crashed in Pennsylvania after passengers overwhelmed the hijackers.
The attacks transformed aviation security, which stepped up its focus on preventing unauthorised access to aircraft flight decks, as well as strengthening security and boarding procedures within airports. Within months, the International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO) had overhauled the global aviation rules, extending security measures for domestic flights and introducing bulletproof, reinforced cockpit doors, personnel vetting and airport identity checks. The most consequential physical change was the reinforced, lockable cockpit door, designed to resist forcible intrusion, followed by a mandatory 100 percent screening of checked baggage.
Airports increased employee screening, baggage and cargo security, and aircraft protection, while ICAO introduced mandatory security audits to assess how countries were implementing the new global standards. In 2015, Germanwings Flight 9525’s first officer Andreas Lubitz locked the captain out of the cockpit and deliberately flew the Airbus A320 they were piloting into the French Alps, killing all 150 people on board. France’s BEA determined that the aviation industry’s medical-certification system had failed to prevent a pilot experiencing a serious mental disorder from operating with a licence.
Extract — continue reading at the source.
