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.
Page T2From§Eachthe milkman edition — 3 October 2026
Co-pilot suspended by Oman as a security risk, hired by FlyDubai, then allegedly tries to kill his captain.
As it ran on the front
Wednesday, September 30. A FlyDubai flight carrying 174 passengers lifts off from Dubai, bound for Israel. The aircraft does not crash. It makes an emergency landing instead, which is the only reason this is a news story and not an obituary.
The reason it doesn't crash has a name: Smit Machchhar, an Indian national, the captain who gets stabbed and still manages to unlock the cockpit door, letting passengers storm in and end it. He is identified first in Indian media, then confirmed by the Indian Embassy and by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu himself. A stabbed man opening a door is the entire reason 174 people are alive to be interviewed about it afterward.…
…(cont) Two days later, on October 2, the Wall Street Journal and NBC News report the next beat: the co-pilot had already been banned from flying by his home country, Oman, over what is described as radical views. Separately, an Israeli official tells NBC that investigators have since found social media posts in which he wrote he wanted to kill Jews. Those are two findings, reported two different ways, about the same man — a ban on record before the flight, and a post investigators found after it.
A day after that, October 3, ABC News adds the detail that sharpens the whole thing: the ban was not some vague national flag. It was Oman Air, a specific airline, that suspended him as a security risk, and that suspension predates the flight he was working the day he allegedly tried to kill his captain.
So the order, stated plainly: a suspension, dated and attributed to a named airline. Then a hiring, by a different airline, for a flight to Israel. Then a stabbing, a locked door, and a captain who happened to survive long enough to open it. The suspension came first. It was real, it belonged to Oman Air, and it sat on record while 174 people boarded a plane anyway.
“Oman Air put this guy on paper as a security risk before FlyDubai ever handed him keys to a cockpit, and that paperwork sat there the whole flight while a stabbed pilot had to unlock a door by hand to stop a plane full of people from going into the ground. The flag existed. The flight happened anyway, and that's two airlines treating a security risk as somebody else's problem until it became 174 people's problem at cruising altitude.”
The receipts
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…
The Wall Street Journal reports the co-pilot who tried to fly a plane bound for Israel into the ground had been banned from flying by his home country, Oman, over his radical views. Plus, an Israeli official told NBC News investigators discovered the co-pilot had posted on social media that he wanted to kill Jews. NBC News’ Matt Bradley…
· ‘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
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.