The incident on Flydubai flight FZ1073, flying from Dubai to Tel Aviv, on September 30 became the main news of all the world's media. The pilot who attacked a colleague with a knife was neutralized and the plane was landed safely. However, literally an hour after the first reports of what happened, social networks were filled with many conspiracy theories. Lenta.ru is looking into where they came from.
The co-pilot attacked the captain two hours after takeoff
At about half past eight in the morning Moscow time, a Boeing 737 MAX, flying from Dubai to Tel Aviv, suddenly rushed towards the ground. According to tracking data, in 30 seconds he lost more than 4.2 thousand kilometers. The crew sent a distress signal, and then changed it to a signal about the seizure of the ship. The plane then leveled off and landed at Tabuk Airport in Saudi Arabia. An hour and twenty minutes had passed since the dive.
Information has emerged that the flight's co-pilot hit the captain of the ship with a knife. Then other crew members and passengers intervened. The Boeing pilots who were on board as passengers landed the aircraft. It later became known that the pilot of the plane was Indian citizen Smith Machchhar.
Israeli authorities blamed for the incident
Immediately after the first media reports about what happened, rumors and conspiracy theories began to appear.
First of all, accusations fell on the Israeli government, the Mossad and Benjamin Netanyahu personally. Many conspiracy theorists, including well-known conspiracy theorist Jackson Hinkle, began writing on social networks that the plane incident was primarily beneficial to the Prime Minister of Israel.
The conspiracy theorists reasoned like this. In their opinion, Netanyahu will probably lose in the early parliamentary elections on October 27, and he knows about it. It was because of this that he allegedly decided to stage a provocation and decided to organize a terrorist attack himself, and blame it on certain forces hostile to Israel.
The authors of these reports believe that with the help of the terrorist attack, Netanyahu hoped to once again delay the proceedings on the charges of bribery and corruption brought against him. Conspiracy theorists believe that last time, in order to avoid trial, he launched a military operation in Gaza.
Another conspiracy theory is that Mossad agents were supposed to hijack a plane and then fly it into a skyscraper, causing a “new 9/11.” Iran would be blamed for this. Israel, in this way, allegedly wanted to get a new reason to attack this Middle Eastern country, as well as to incite against it those governments that had previously been neutral or friendly towards Tehran.
Other countries, India and Pakistan, were also accused of involvement in the attack on the pilot.
When it became known that the pilot of the aircraft was an Indian citizen, former Indian MP Priyanka Chaturvedi wondered whether the co-pilot had ties to Pakistan. She hinted that it was there that he "could have been trained for the mission."
This statement caused a new wave of conspiracy theories. On Indian social networks, the attacker was called a Pakistani and blamed on the neighboring intelligence services.
The central figure in this conspiracy theory was the fictitious former Indian foreign intelligence agent Raghav Menon, who was allegedly supposed to play the role of the hijacker. Interestingly, this information was disseminated using a fake video, likely created using deepfake technology.
The video was a BBC news report alleging that senior Indian officials Parag Jain and Ajit Doval had a secret meeting with Mossad officials and agreed to hijack a Flydubai plane. The footage was taken from a real news broadcast, and the voice of presenter Sally Bundock was generated using a neural network.
The BBC said that there was nothing of the kind in their news. It was later revealed that the footage was taken from an episode aired on September 29, which was the day before the plane incident.
It is interesting that conspiracy theorists agreed in these two falsifications, who tried to incite both anti-Pakistan and anti-Indian sentiments.
Who tried to pass off the incident as a fight between Russian and Ukrainian pilots
The very first theory, unrelated to reality, was the version that the Flydubai pilots were from Russia and Ukraine and for some reason got into a fight in the cockpit. Then the situation changed, a version was voiced that a Russian and a Ukrainian, who knew how to fly planes, allegedly flew as passengers and landed the plane after the incident.
Probably the first to disseminate this information was the Mako news portal of the Israeli TV channel N12. Moreover, it was initially stated that the information was received from a high-ranking Israeli official. However, the misinformation did not last long. The message was quickly deleted and the fuss died down.
The investigation into the incident on board Flydubai flight FZ1073 on September 30 continues. The United Arab Emirates Attorney General's Office has created a special investigation team.
Israel's position is tough. There, the incident is considered an “attempted jihadist terrorist attack.” But Netanyahu admitted that Iran cannot yet be blamed for what happened. It is also unknown how the co-pilot brought the knife on board and whether he had accomplices. Meanwhile, the craziest theories continue to circulate on the Internet, in which, to complete the picture, the only thing missing is a conspiracy of the world government.
