Israel was ready to shoot down flydubai 1073 if the dive had continued

Israel was prepared to shoot down flydubai flight 1073 on 30 September if the aircraft had continued toward Israeli airspace, two Israeli sources with direct knowledge told CBS, in an account the Jerusalem Post carried this week. The Boeing 737 MAX 8, registration A6-FKF, was flying from Dubai to Tel Aviv with 166 Israeli passengers among more than 170 people on board. The first officer, named in public accounts as Hamam al-Hammami, attacked the captain, Smit Machchhar, with the cockpit crash axe. The aircraft then went into a steep dive. Passengers and deadheading flydubai pilots restrained al-Hammami, and the jet landed at Tabuk in Saudi Arabia.

The interception plan is the new element in this week's reporting. After the jet plunged, the Israel Air Force tried to raise the cockpit and got no answer, CBS reported. Israeli authorities opened a standing procedure for a civilian aircraft that may be hostile, convened a set committee, and set up a command centre. Fighters were scrambled. Israeli airspace was closed. The jets were recalled after the aircraft, then about 400 miles from Israel, turned toward Saudi Arabia. Saudi Arabia scrambled its own fighters. Had 1073 kept coming and reached a set distance, the two sources said, Israeli fighters would have entered Jordanian airspace to investigate, and the option to shoot the aircraft down was live, Israeli passengers included.

The flight path inside the dive is now public in more detail than the first statements. Ben Caspit, on 103FM, and a Jerusalem Post reconstruction, put the attack at about 09:21, with the aircraft near 34,000 feet. The nose was pushed down to an angle of about 39 degrees. A normal passenger descent is near 3 degrees. In 92 seconds the jet lost about 17,400 feet. In the steepest stretch, between 09:21 and 09:22, it fell from about 31,600 feet to about 16,600 feet, a loss of 15,000 feet in 55 seconds. The Post reported an overspeed that damaged the rudder, and G-forces beyond ordinary operating limits. Caspit said that if the pilot who recovered the aircraft, named in his account as Yaniv Hayun, had pulled hard while still in the dive, the airframe could have broken up.

Two off-duty pilots in the cabin took control after the first officer was held and the captain was injured. They flew the damaged aircraft for more than an hour before the landing at Tabuk. Al-Hammami was taken into custody after landing. Images of Ayman al-Zawahiri and of the suicide bomber Humam Khalil Abu-Mulal al-Balawi were later reported on his social media. The investigation is with Israeli and Emirati agencies. Neither has published a final account of motive.

The aircraft is a 737 MAX 8 in flydubai colours, call sign Skydubai 1073, IATA FZ1073. The origin was Dubai International. The planned destination was Ben Gurion. The diversion field was Tabuk, in northwestern Saudi Arabia, which is the geography that put Saudi fighters, rather than only Israeli ones, on the last leg. The Jordanian airspace point in the CBS account is the part with a diplomatic edge. An Israeli fighter crossing into Jordan to inspect or shoot down a UAE-registered jet, full of Israeli passengers, would have been a second incident layered on the first. It did not happen, because the aircraft turned away. The sources described the option as real.

What is still missing is a joint timeline from the three governments whose aircraft and airspace were involved. Flydubai has not published the flight-data readout. Israel has not published the rules under which the shoot-down option would have been ordered, or who on the predetermined committee would have given it. Saudi Arabia has not published its fighter log for the hour over Tabuk. Until those exist, the public record is the dive numbers, the names in the cockpit and the cabin, the Tabuk landing, and the CBS account that a shoot-down was prepared and then stood down.