From our other sites
The story
On September 30, a co-pilot stabbed the captain with a knife aboard a flydubai jet (a UAE budget airline), sending the aircraft plunging roughly 4,300 meters from a cruising altitude of about 10,000 meters. Passengers who noticed something was wrong stormed the cockpit and subdued the co-pilot, and an off-duty pilot who happened to be on board took over the controls and made an emergency landing in Saudi Arabia. On 5ch, discussion centered on the split-second decision of the passenger who pulled back on the control column, the circumstances behind why multiple off-duty pilots are often aboard international flights, and the differences in how various countries’ media covered the story.
On September 30, a flydubai passenger jet from the United Arab Emirates made an emergency landing in northwestern Saudi Arabia while en route from Dubai to Tel Aviv, Israel’s commercial hub. The co-pilot stabbed the captain, and the plane plunged about 4,300 meters. Passengers and crew entered the cockpit and overpowered the co-pilot. So what actually happened on board, at roughly 10,000 meters up?
The incident occurred about two hours and twenty minutes after takeoff. According to the Associated Press, passengers witnessed the co-pilot stab the captain. When passengers rushed in and forced their way into the cockpit, the co-pilot reportedly appeared to be trying to smash the flight controls.
As passengers grappled with the co-pilot, one of them grabbed the control column and pulled it back, mimicking something he’d seen on television. Another crew member then reportedly took over the controls. Flydubai said crew secured the aircraft and “changed course to land the plane safely.”
Source: asahi.com / Read the original article here
What people said
Guess the yoke wasn't rigged like a 'Prius missile' (a Japanese meme about Toyota Prius runaway-acceleration mishaps)
Back in the day arcades used to have flight simulator games
Re: #3
What's a 'Gock'? It's 'cook' — his name was 'Ryback'
Thought he was just a regular 'Gock,' but turns out he used to be Char's Custom (the special ace-pilot mobile suit from Gundam)
This
Apparently it was way more than one or two
https://x.com/israelsakura/status/2105269383127859481?s=46&t=JNHamVEf4RPLs2uBUtZPgg
Turns out it was actually an off-duty plumber. (Per Trump)
https://news.ntv.co.jp/category/international/0faed6186a384860977554a95486e6bf
In that case I'll vote for off-duty Gachapin (the beloved green dinosaur mascot from Japanese kids' TV)
Did that change after the German incident?
Sounds like the guy who got stabbed somehow managed to open it from the inside
Bruce Willis was dead the whole time
In Japan that counts as a 'necessity' defense — he's safe
Still, they said the captain was a huge hero — badly wounded, yet he still managed some special trick to open the cockpit door and call out to passengers for help
I saw that on the morning satellite news too — maybe because the captain was Indian, the anchor and the on-site reporter just kept chanting "the captain is amazing" and "India is amazing" without ever actually explaining the incident. Indian and Chinese news is so boring, always just hyping up their own country
"Is there a pilot among the passengers?!"
If it works out in the end, congrats — that guy's a pilot as of today
Honestly a lot of off-duty company pilots end up riding as passengers anyway
Uh…
Couldn't that stall the plane if you're not careful?
It's fine, fly-by-wire corrects for that
If I figured "we're crashing for sure unless I pull back," I'd pull too — doing nothing means death either way
It was accelerating hard while diving, so pulling back probably helped, no?
Passenger: "I've seen it on TV. Leave it to me."
There was a guy who'd only ever played flight sims and then tried to fly a real plane under a bridge
Seriously, don't you think the flight attendant should've just flown it herself?
Reports agree that the stabbed captain was from the UAE,
and the co-pilot who stabbed him and tried to crash the plane was from Oman.
But the one who actually landed the plane at the Saudi airport was an off-duty pilot among the passengers —
so in real life, "Is there a pilot among the passengers?!" → *quietly raises hand* actually happened
Planes have a pretty high chance of having a pilot on board anyway —
like someone with a flight scheduled from the arrival country, or
someone riding along just to get home
It's not really that kind of coincidence — there were originally two "deadhead" pilots riding along.
Apparently it's to prevent a situation where delays push a crew past their duty-time limit and they can't fly the return leg
"We're currently flying over Saudi Arabia.
One of the crew members attacked the pilot with a knife
and disabled the plane's systems.
Yaniv (the guy in the photo?) and another passenger stormed the cockpit and subdued the attacker.
Luckily, there were two more pilots on board.
They're the ones who got us down safely."
Well, I mean, sure. On a flight packed with Israelis, the odds of having a trained commando and two extra pilots aboard are already pretty high.
Statistically speaking, the odds of there also being at least one heart surgeon, one psychologist, one lawyer,
and one diamond dealer on board are comfortably above 50% too.
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/HTc5qeIXoAAlKOg.jpg
https://x.com/pepel_klaasa/status/2105214756873203780
Apparently the stabbed captain managed to escape and open it himself
It's 'pit,' not 'pid.' Just saying.
Background and Key Points of This Discussion
International flights have a practice called “deadheading,” where off-duty pilots fly as passengers so that if a crew runs over its duty-time limit, someone is still available to fly the return leg. So the thread’s observation that “a pilot just happened to be on board” isn’t really pure chance — it reflects a system with a built-in, non-trivial probability of exactly that happening. Also, if the aircraft uses a standard fly-by-wire system, it’s designed to automatically correct for excessive inputs even when a layperson pulls the control column — which answers the thread’s question of whether it’s really okay for an amateur to take the controls. On the other hand, the claim that Indian media coverage kept repeating “the captain is amazing” and “India is amazing” while skimping on details of the incident itself comes from the thread secondhand and hasn’t been independently verified here. As for cockpit locking procedures, rules were tightened after the 2015 Germanwings crash, but exactly how passengers were able to get in this time remains only partially explained even in the original source article.
*This article is compiled from excerpts and a summary of the 5ch (News Flash+) thread “Plane Plunges, Captain Stabbed: How Did Passengers Stop the Crash?“
Leave a Reply