Terror in the Cockpit: The Flydubai Hijacking Attempt | EYES ON GEOPOLITICS

Dee Takos (0:00)

This episode is presented by VAER Watches. Go to vaerwatches.com/theteamhouse.

Hey everybody, we're back for another episode of Eyes On Geopolitics. I'm here with Andy Milburn, Jonathan Hackett, and Marc Polymeropoulos. A lot happening, as usual. The big story, on September 30th, Flydubai Flight, I was trying to practice that too, because I knew I would trip it up. 1073, flying from Dubai to Tel Aviv, was essentially hijacked. The co-pilot attacked the captain inside the cockpit with an emergency crash ax and tried to seize control of the aircraft. During the struggle, the 737 plunged roughly 17,000 feet before the captain managed to open the cockpit door. Passengers and cabin crew basically came in and were able to get the essentially co-pilot who attacked the captain under control. There were a couple of deadhead slash other Flydubai pilots in the plane that were able to land it safely in Saudi Arabia. There was a lot of back and forth, a ton of conspiracy theories going on about this. It looks like the UAE is actually saying that this was a terrorist attack and they're trying to figure out if this guy acted alone or if he had some ties to other extremist groups. And so that's happening and rumors and conspiracy theories are swirling everywhere.

Marc, you go first and what are you thinking?

Marc Polymeropoulos (1:34)

You know, the people who are doing their rumors and conspiracy theories are out of their frickin gourd. But it's social media. I mean, that's where you see it on. So what are you going to do about that? I mean, you know, ultimately what happened here is we averted a major mass casualty event.

It is based on the heroism of the pilot whose co-pilot literally attacked them. You know, the pilot, a lot of this has come out now in the debriefs. But the co-pilot said he wanted to pray. And so the pilot said, sure, not all that unusual. And then all of a sudden the guy gets attacked by an axe. And you know, an axe that actually exists in the cockpit. I think Jonathan was talking to us before in the green room. This is not something that was smuggled on. It actually exists.

And in this incredible struggle that ensues, the pilot then managed to open the door. Passengers rush in, drag them both out. And then some pilots, who were just reserved pilots in the back, ended up landing the plane. But it's only by the grace of God that this was not a massive, awful terrorist incident. The co-pilot, under interrogation now, or I guess the…I think he's been transferred actually to the UAE from Saudi, and the Israelis are going to be allowed to participate, which I think is important, has said that his target was Israel.

And if you could just imagine the terror inside that airclimb, you know, plunges several thousand meters. And that exceeded the max limit of the 737

There's pictures on social media of kind of the tail of the fin…the tail of the plane. I think it's amazing it didn't break up in flight.

And so just really an extraordinary incident. I think that there's a couple of keys on this. One is that we talk a lot on the show about terrorism. You know, terrorism is not a problem until it is. This was almost a mass casualty event. It looks like it was a lone wolf, but we still don't know. Clearly his background… Everyone's kind of going through his background. It turns out he's Omani and he was barred from flying there. Incredible. He got a job in the Emirates and then he passed this…the Israeli checks. In Israel, the Ministry of Transportation is supposed to check out all pilots who end up landing in Israel. They obviously failed in this miserably. And so there was a pretty significant security and intelligence failure on everyone's part, the Emirates, but also in the Israelis. And the final piece is that this now turns into a political issue in Israel. Elections October 27th. Netanyahu is trying to embrace this notion of security, but it turns out that his government has failed pretty spectacularly. Again, the notion of background checks and investigations. But as everything, there's no really foreign policy in Israel. It's only domestic politics. So this has actually taken the turn in terms of the domestic political scene there. But last thing, there's four or five Americans on board as well. So this could have been just an awful incident. There's no tie yet to Iran, even though there's some hints of this. But it does look like it's a lone wolf, but I think they'll figure this out in the debriefs, the interrogation, and then they're digging through. Which everyone in social media is doing. In fact, I mean, it's incredible. You can find all of his extremist leanings on social media. It's incredible that nobody picked this up.