The co-pilot who hijacked a Flydubai flight carrying 174 passengers and stabbed his captain on Wednesday was previously banned from flying by Oman over his radical beliefs. Israeli officials identified the hijacker as an Omani national, but according to a Wall Street Journal report, the individual was banned from operating an aircraft by…
Page T2From§Eachthe early evening edition — 2 October 2026
FlyDubai passengers hail hero pilot for averting the crash a competing airline already warned was coming.
As it ran on the front
On Wednesday, a FlyDubai flight out of Dubai carrying 174 passengers made an emergency landing after one of its own pilots allegedly tried to seize the controls and crash the plane. The man who stopped him was the captain he had just stabbed, who used the only thing left to use: he unlocked the cockpit door so passengers could get in. By September 30, Indian media had named the pilot, Smit Machchhar. Israel's prime minister confirmed it. So did the Indian Embassy. The word going around the cabin, and then the wires, was hero. He is one.
Then, on October 2, officials added the detail that turns the story. The co-pilot accused of trying to kill his captain had already been flagged. The ban wasn't a rumor. It was a personnel decision at a national carrier, made in advance, on file.…
…(cont) Here is where the two airlines stop being two airlines in the same story and become the story. Oman Air's assessment sat in Oman Air's records.
Airline security screening runs carrier by carrier, country by country. A pilot grounded at one airline can still be cleared at another, and how often that happens is not a number the industry publishes. It is not a loophole anyone is defending out loud; it is just how the paperwork currently moves, or doesn't.
The 174 people who boarded that flight did not know they were flying with a man one airline had already decided not to trust. They found out when he stood up from his seat with intent, and they are alive because another pilot, not a regulator, not a background check, absorbed the first part of it and still managed to open a door. The hero story is true. It is also the only reason anyone is asking, two days later, why the warning stayed in Oman.
“You got two airlines in the same neighborhood and a guy with a knife flying between them, and the only reason anyone's alive is a pilot got stabbed and still had the arm to turn a lock. That's not a security system working, that's a coin flip that landed right. Nobody's asking yet how many more of these guys are sitting in somebody else's cockpit right now because the file that says "don't" never left the building it was written in.”
“Look, Oman Air did exactly what you want an airline to do — they identified a risk and acted. That's the system functioning. Is it FlyDubai's fault nobody called them? I mean — somebody should've called them. Did I say that? That's not really a talking point I'm supposed to have. The point is, the hero pilot stopped it, so the system — worked? In the end?”
The receipts
The co-pilot of the FlyDubai plane who allegedly attacked its captain is an Omani national who was previously suspended by Oman Air as a security risk, sources say.
· ‘Hero’ pilot who helped save hijacked plane identified as Indian national Smit Machchhar from the morgue, 30 Sep 2026
· Latest on FlyDubai flight to Israel where passenger says "co-pilot tried to murder pilot" from the morgue, 30 Sep 2026
· Latest on Flydubai flight to Israel where passenger says "co-pilot tried to murder pilot" from the morgue, 30 Sep 2026
This page is a back-issue: the story as it ran, receipts as they were. The current edition is at the front. The byline is a pen name for a column drafted by a machine and checked by the editor: how this is made.