Little more than an hour after the drama began aboard a Flydubai flight from Dubai to Tel Aviv, claims were already spreading online that Israel had staged the incident.
According to research by CAM’s antisemitism research center, 2,963 posts on X within 12 hours attributed the incident to Israel, Mossad, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Zionists or Jews. A post by Jackson Hinkle, a far-right American influencer associated with conspiracy theories, disinformation and strongly anti-Israel content, portrayed the incident as a staged operation and drew more than 2.4 million views.
US President Donald Trump comments on the attempted attack aboard a Flydubai flight to Israel
(Video: X)
From there, the theory expanded rapidly: Netanyahu supposedly knew in advance; Israeli security personnel had allegedly been planted on the plane; the flight number supposedly concealed an Oct. 7 message; and the absence of deployed oxygen masks, even a cup of water that did not spill, was presented as proof that the entire incident had been staged.
At the same time, a fabricated video made to resemble a BBC report circulated online, alleging involvement by Mossad and Indian intelligence officials.
But information that emerged in the days after the incident did not come only from Israel. Flydubai confirmed there had been a confrontation in the cockpit, and on Saturday the United Arab Emirates’ attorney general said the co-pilot had attempted to carry out a “terrorist act,” attacked the captain with an emergency axe and tried to seize control of the aircraft.
The investigation into his motive and any possible connections is continuing.
So what lies behind the claims circulating online, what has already been disproved and what questions remain unanswered?
‘Israel staged the incident’
This is the central conspiracy theory from which most of the others stem: that the attempted hijacking did not happen as described, but was instead a “false flag” operation intended to benefit Israel, whether by strengthening Netanyahu before the election, creating justification for action against Iran or portraying Israel as a victim of terrorism.
During the first hours after the incident, there was a genuine gap between the dramatic details being reported in Israel and Flydubai’s highly cautious initial wording. The airline at first confirmed only that an “incident” had occurred during the flight and that the aircraft had landed safely in Tabuk, Saudi Arabia.
It later confirmed that a confrontation had taken place in the cockpit and that members of its crew secured the aircraft and landed it safely.
Then, on Oct. 3, a source that could hardly be described as part of an Israeli narrative entered the picture: the UAE attorney general.
He said the investigation had found that the co-pilot attempted to carry out a “terrorist act,” attacked the captain with an emergency axe and tried to take control of the aircraft.
That announcement still does not answer what motivated him, whether he acted alone or whether he had ties to any organization. But it contradicts the claim that the cockpit attack itself was an Israeli fabrication.
‘Netanyahu warned about it a day earlier, then it happened’
This is one of the most effective details in the conspiracy theory because its underlying premise is real.
A day before the incident, Netanyahu said Israel had “indications” that its enemies might try to attack it ahead of the Oct. 27 election. He did not specify the nature of the threat.
The following morning, the drama aboard flight FZ1073 unfolded.
The coincidence can prompt questions, but it is not evidence that Netanyahu knew in advance about the flight, let alone that Israel organized the incident.
No evidence published so far has linked Netanyahu’s warning to the Flydubai flight.
‘The plane plunged, so why didn’t the oxygen masks drop?’
This is one of the most frequently repeated technical claims.
Flight-tracking data showed an unusually sharp descent. The aircraft, which had been cruising at about 34,000 feet, descended to roughly 16,600 feet in about a minute and a half. During part of that descent, it lost nearly 14,000 feet in less than 30 seconds.
Flight path and emergency landing of the Flydubai aircraft in Saudi Arabia
(Video: Flightradar)
But passenger oxygen masks are not triggered simply because the aircraft itself falls below a certain altitude, nor because it descends rapidly.
The system responds to pressure inside the cabin. On Boeing 737 aircraft, the oxygen system is automatically activated when the “cabin altitude,” the equivalent altitude produced by cabin pressure, rises above roughly 14,000 feet.
An aircraft can descend rapidly from cruising altitude while the cabin remains pressurized. In that situation, there would be no reason for the oxygen masks to deploy.
No cabin-pressure data from the incident has been released, so it is not possible to determine precisely what happened to the pressurization system.
But the absence of dangling oxygen masks in passenger videos does not prove the aircraft did not lose altitude.
‘What about the cup of water that didn’t spill?’
A cup of water also became a centerpiece of the conspiracy claims.
Posts circulating online highlighted a cup standing on a tray table inside the aircraft, arguing that if the plane had really “fallen” thousands of feet, the cup could not possibly have remained in place.
There is, however, no evidence that the image was taken during the precise tens of seconds in which the aircraft underwent its unusual loss of altitude.
And descending thousands of feet per minute does not necessarily mean an aircraft is in free fall. Flight-tracking data shows altitude and vertical speed, but by itself does not reveal the G-forces acting on passengers and objects at every moment.
Without flight-recorder data and an exact timestamp for the image, the cup cannot be used to reconstruct the aircraft’s motion, much less prove that the descent did not happen.
One of the countless social-media posts focusing on the cup drew 5.2 million views.
‘But the videos were filmed on two different planes’
Here, conspiracy theorists noticed something real: the two videos they compared do show different aircraft.
The problem is that one of them had nothing to do with the incident.
One video showed passengers aboard the Flydubai aircraft. Another, circulated as footage of FZ1073 passengers celebrating after the plane was secured, showed Israelis dancing aboard an aircraft while one carried a large speaker.
Online users compared the ceilings, seats and overhead bins and concluded that the footage came from two different cabins, supposedly proving the event was staged.
A fact-check by Lead Stories found that the second video was filmed in August 2025, more than a year before the Flydubai incident, and showed Israel’s national basketball team traveling to EuroBasket.
So the observation that the videos show two different aircraft was correct. The claim that both videos depicted the same flight was not.
Contrary to claims online, this is not footage from the hijacked flight
‘BBC exposed a Mossad link to Indian intelligence’
After the incident, a video began circulating that at first glance appeared to be a BBC News report.
It featured BBC presenter Sally Bundock and purported to link an Indian citizen to the incident while raising allegations about Indian intelligence and Mossad involvement.
The video was fabricated.
Fake: BBC did not air this
The BBC confirmed to fact-checking organization Full Fact that it was not genuine, while ABC Verify found that authentic footage of Bundock had been paired with a fabricated voice track and script.
The video also mixed footage unrelated to the Flydubai flight with genuine images from the incident. According to ABC, it was viewed hundreds of thousands of times.
This was no longer simply a competing interpretation of a real event. The purported “evidence” itself had been manufactured.
‘1073 really means 10/7/3’
Even the flight number was drawn into the conspiracy theories.
Online posts suggested reading FZ1073 as 10/7/3, a reference to Oct. 7 and three years since the Hamas attack, and presented the supposed code as evidence that the incident had been planned in advance.
But FZ1073 was not a flight number assigned specifically for Sept. 30.
Plane Finder flight history shows the number was already being used for Flydubai’s Dubai-Tel Aviv route between Sept. 11 and 17, weeks before the incident.
The fact that the flight number existed beforehand turns the supposed code into a numerical coincidence, not evidence of advance planning.
‘How did there happen to be more pilots on board?’
Another detail presented as suspicious was the presence of additional crew members aboard the aircraft who were capable of flying it after the cockpit confrontation.
Some posts went further, describing them as Israeli “special forces” operatives planted on the flight in advance.
The hero of the harrowing Flydubai flight meets Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu
But Flydubai itself directly confirmed the presence of its crew members.
The airline said the aircraft was “successfully secured” by Flydubai personnel traveling on the flight, who diverted it and landed safely in Tabuk.
The company’s CEO later thanked the captain, “the pilots who secured the aircraft and landed it safely,” the cabin crew and passengers who assisted.
Transporting airline crew as passengers between destinations is a routine part of commercial aviation.
Flydubai has not publicly explained in detail why those particular crew members were aboard that flight, so there is no basis for drawing conclusions beyond the airline’s account.
But no evidence has been published showing they were Israeli security personnel planted on the aircraft.
There are real questions, too
None of this means every detail of the affair has been explained.
On the contrary, information that emerged after the incident has raised serious questions about the co-pilot and the background checks he underwent.
AP reported that the suspect, identified by three sources as Hammam al-Hammami, an Omani citizen, had previously been removed from flying duties at Oman Air because of concerns over extremist views and transferred to an administrative role. He was later hired by Flydubai.
Terrorist pilot Hammam al-Hammami aboard the Flydubai flight
A Gulf diplomat quoted by AP said al-Hammami underwent standard security checks before he was hired, but in the diplomat’s assessment those checks focused on whether he had criminal convictions and did not include a deeper examination for possible signs of radicalization.
The diplomat said the continuing investigation had so far found no link between al-Hammami and a terrorist organization. The UAE attorney general has also said possible connections remain under investigation.
CNN reported that social-media accounts linked to al-Hammami contained extremist material, including a video featuring images of former al-Qaeda leader Ayman al-Zawahiri and Humam Khalil Abu-Mulal al-Balawi, the suicide bomber who carried out the 2009 attack on a CIA base in Afghanistan.
The background of pilot Hammam al-Hammami
(Video: CNN)
However, the video was posted about nine hours after the Flydubai incident, meaning it remains unclear who uploaded it or whether it had been scheduled for publication beforehand.
Another question concerns how al-Hammami came to be assigned to a flight to Israel.
According to a document obtained by ynet, Flydubai had committed as early as 2020 to implementing restrictions in its crew-scheduling system designed to comply with “nationality restrictions for flights to Israel,” as required by Israel’s Transportation Ministry.
After the incident, ministry officials said the assignment of the Omani pilot apparently violated that commitment.
The affair also exposed a broader problem: Israel currently has no mechanism for individually screening in advance the identity and background of every crew member aboard commercial flights operated by foreign airlines.
Transportation Ministry officials acknowledged that Israel relies heavily on declarations by foreign airlines and on security systems in the countries where those airlines are based.
The question, therefore, is not only how al-Hammami came to be assigned to an Israel-bound flight, but who was supposed to identify the problem before the aircraft took off.
UAE authorities also have yet to present a final picture.
The attorney general said the investigation is continuing and is examining, among other issues, the motive, the full circumstances of the incident, possible connections and physical and digital evidence.
That may be the most important distinction between fact-checking and conspiracy theory: an unexplained detail is a reason to keep asking questions. It is not proof that the entire event was staged.
Questions remain surrounding FZ1073. But so far, no evidence has been presented that the incident was fabricated.
What does exist are flight-tracking data, official Flydubai statements and an explicit finding from UAE authorities that the co-pilot attempted to carry out a terrorist act.