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Trump Links FlyDubai Hijacking Attempt to Possible Terrorism

4 sources · updated 2026-10-01
Left 33% Center 0% Right 67%
1 left · 0 center · 2 right

What happened

On Wednesday, President Donald Trump told Oval Office reporters that the co-pilot of flydubai flight FZ1073 from Dubai to Tel Aviv, who had allegedly stabbed the captain in flight, was “perhaps a terrorist, or perhaps a whack job,” after speaking with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. The Boeing 737, carrying 174 passengers including four U.S. citizens, plunged about 14,000 feet in less than 30 seconds before an emergency landing in Tabuk, Saudi Arabia; all aboard survived. Captain Smit Machchhar, an Indian national, was hospitalized in Tabuk in stable condition, and the co-pilot, identified as Omani, was taken into Saudi custody. After Machchhar opened the cockpit door, passengers including Israeli plumber Yaniv Hayun helped subdue the co-pilot, and qualified pilots traveling as passengers took over the controls; Trump relayed Netanyahu’s account that Hayun, who had never flown a plane, pulled back on the yoke, adding, “I don’t know if it’s true, but that’s the story that I got.” Israeli officials described the episode as an attempted terrorist attack, while flydubai said the circumstances and motive remained under investigation and temporarily suspended all flights to and from Israel.
Sourcing check · Fully on the record · 3 articles

3 of 3 articles cite a named source for the story. It was on the record from the first report.

What these terms mean and how they're counted
On the record · names a source 3 of 3
On the record means the article cites a source by name for the story's main claim: a person, or an institution speaking officially, such as a company statement or a named agency's spokesperson. The opposite is an unnamed source. The count is how many of the counted articles cite at least one such source; the names are everyone named across them, each once however the articles spell it. Here: Donald Trump and Benjamin Netanyahu
Primary evidence · cites a document or data 0 of 3
Primary evidence means the article cites a record you could check yourself: a court filing or ruling, a dataset or report, a recording or transcript, an official statement or press release, market data. A quote is not a document. The count is how many articles cite one. Here: None cited.
Credits another outlet 0 of 3
The article says the story comes from another outlet's reporting (“first reported by Reuters”). Those articles relay the story; they are not independent confirmation. Here: Each article presents its own reporting.
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How it developed
When the first report landed and whether it named anyone; when the first named source and the first document appeared. Here: First report Sep 30, 21:53 UTC by Bloomberg, naming its source.
Not counted 0
Opinion, analysis and video pieces, and articles too short to assess. Every count above is out of the counted articles. An article republished under a new headline is one article.
This is about who is cited, not whether the story is true. Each source below says what it names. How we count
Omitted — what each side leaves out

Unpacked

Left-leaning coverage withholds Israel’s official terror designation, so Trump’s comment reads as his own guess rather than a recap of the Israeli account. Bloomberg reports only that Trump said the co-pilot was “perhaps a terrorist” and that he had spoken with Netanyahu about the incident. Daily Wire reports that Israeli officials declared a terror attack after the co-pilot allegedly tried to crash the plane. That leaves the president’s terrorism language hanging without the Israeli finding that preceded it. Left-leaning coverage truncates the same Oval Office sentence. Daily Wire carries his hedge that the co-pilot was perhaps a “whack job,” which Bloomberg’s item does not include. What public evidence, if any, have investigators released about why the co-pilot stabbed the captain?
Bottom line

Bloomberg never reports that Israeli officials had already declared the cockpit stabbing a terror attack. That missing label is what makes Trump’s “perhaps a terrorist” line look like a first claim rather than a recap.

The receipts — 2 facts one side's coverage lacks
  • The jet plunged nearly 14,000 feet in less than 30 seconds numberin Daily Wire, Breitbart · absent from left-leaning coverage
  • Four Americans were among the passengers numberin Daily Wire · absent from left-leaning coverage
The Left View
Bloomberg framed the cockpit stabbing as an “incident,” not a hijacking or confirmed terrorist attack, and built the story around Trump’s remark that the attacker was “perhaps a terrorist” and around his call with Netanyahu. It identified the assailant as “a pilot who stabbed a colleague,” stopping short of a terror-attack or hijacking designation.
The Right View
Right-leaning outlets cast the episode as a foiled hijacking and, in The Daily Wire’s words, “Israel’s Near-9/11,” foregrounding Israeli officials’ terror label and Defense Minister Israel Katz’s phrase “attempted jihadist terrorist attack.” They amplified Trump’s praise of Machchhar as a hero and of Hayun as someone who “took the stick” and “leveled out the plane,” while Breitbart included Trump’s qualifier that he was repeating “the story that I heard.” Coverage stressed Americans on board, scrambled Israeli fighter jets, Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin’s comment that TSA is “always at high alert,” and Israeli officials’ claim that the attack targeted the Israel–UAE relationship forged through the Abraham Accords, the 2020 normalization agreements.
Our Take (balanced)
The left-leaning account’s strongest argument is evidentiary caution: Bloomberg’s “incident” framing tracks Trump’s own hedge (“perhaps a terrorist, or perhaps a whack job”) and flydubai’s statement that motive is still under investigation. The right-leaning account’s strongest argument is official attribution of intent: Katz’s “attempted jihadist terrorist attack,” Netanyahu’s statement that the co-pilot “apparently tried to crash the plane with everyone on board,” and the cockpit assault paired with the steep descent already established. The central unresolved tension is whether the co-pilot’s motive is established as terrorism, as Israeli officials and right-leaning coverage assert, or remains unproven—a gap Trump himself marked by pairing “terrorist” with “whack job” and by saying he did not know whether the plumber-at-the-controls account was true.

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