Posted on 10/02/2026 5:38:41 AM PDT by MtnClimber
The recent terrifying crisis aboard Flydubai Flight FZ 1073 from Dubai to Tel Aviv serves as a stark warning to the global security community: Commercial aviation remains a prime target, and the nature of the threat is rapidly shifting.
During the flight, a violent struggle erupted inside the cockpit, sending the aircraft into a sudden, steep descent from 17,000 feet and triggering emergency distress codes. A horrific disaster was averted only because of the immediate, decisive intervention of the remaining crew and vigilant passengers on board, who managed to overpower the individual and stabilize the aircraft before an emergency diversion to Tabuk, Saudi Arabia.
While we can breathe a sigh of relief for the lives saved, security professionals must look beyond the immediate heroism. This incident highlights a systemic, evolving vulnerability that the aviation industry can no longer afford to ignore.
The Historic Reality of the Insider Threat
When post-9/11 security overhauls were implemented worldwide, the primary focus was on hardened cockpit doors and thorough passenger screening at checkpoints. The underlying assumption was that the primary threat would always come from the passenger cabin. Yet, history tells a far more complicated story. The threat behind the flight deck door, the insider threat, has repeatedly brought commercial airliners to the brink of catastrophe:
- Federal Express Flight 705 (1994): Auburn Calloway, an off-duty FedEx flight engineer facing termination, boarded a DC-10 carrying heavy weapons hidden in a guitar case. Intending to crash the plane and stage it as an accident, Calloway severely injured the flight crew. Despite sustaining massive trauma, the pilots fought back, neutralized Calloway, and executed an extraordinary landing.
- SilkAir Flight 185 (1997): Investigating authorities concluded that the captain intentionally disabled the flight data recorders and placed the Boeing 737
(Excerpt) Read more at americanthinker.com ...
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The vulnerability to insider threats is huge. How do protection measures get implemented without crippling the industry?
In the 60s and 70s and before when we were reading about the super controlled sci-fi future of constant security and monitoring of everything, we all pretty much wondered how it would come about, I bet none of us predicted that Islam would change the world so much and form so much of the changes of the future in advanced and open societies.
“The vulnerability to insider threats is huge. How do protection measures get implemented without crippling the industry?”
One way, for the newer plans at least, is to have a list of safe airports to land at, and then give ground control the ability to have the aircraft fly itself to one of those airports, while fully disabling the cockpit.
In other words, if you have a Muslim in the cockpit, without weapons, there’s nothing he would be able to do to meet his 43 virgins or whatever.
I recall in the 1980’s, a fellow graduate student an I were talking about Afghanistan. He cautioned me about becoming complacent about Muslims. It gave me food for thought.
In retrospect, he was exactly correct.
In one of Isaac Asimov’s science fiction novels, the people in the future wonder how anyone trusted aircraft in the hands of humans, rather than the much safer computerized, robotic control...
Or just pay for sane, sober, moral, and prudent air and ground crews.
“In one of Isaac Asimov’s science fiction novels, the people in the future wonder how anyone trusted aircraft in the hands of humans, rather than the much safer computerized, robotic control...”
It would have to be done in a VERY CAREFUL way. Much easier, and cheaper, to simply keep Muslims out of the cockpit.
About a century ago, the fantasy writer Lord Dunsany wrote a short story about traveling to Sicily (he was Irish) and climbing an ancient tower. At the top of the tower he encountered a ghost who could not rest. It turns out that the ghost was constantly scanning the horizon to make sure the Saracen was not coming.
Dunsany, in the story, comforts the ghost and says that things have changed over the past 500 years. There is peace. The Saracen is not our enemy. The Saracen is not coming. The ghost can rest.
But the ghost shakes his head: "The Saracen is always coming."
For one of the oddly most truthful movies on Islam that you will see since it is sort of a Jeff Chandler Western of 1800 America and it has his girlfriend kidnapped by Muslims on the ocean and it shows Muslims as Americans used to know Islam, which was pretty accurate as a general sense of their world.
On youtube the movie is listed as ‘ACROSS THE BARBARY SEA’
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RYUeNXpGVjk
The movie is ‘Yankee Pasha’ 1954 and is well rated.
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0047684/
While I agree that your suggestion is the simplest solution it is not viable when one intends to fly to and from Muslim nations.
If we will not permit Muslim pilots on our planes we are not likely to be welcomed at Muslim airports.
Even if we made such a policy we would likely get the occasional closet convert who infiltrates the cockpit.
The next step will be implementing Tesla robotaxi-style remote control of aircraft from the ground, locking out the crew in case of an incident. Which will open up another can of worms over who gets access to the master control center.
“I bet none of us predicted...”
TRUE.
GREAT thread. Solutions?
I don’t know how to get to the solutions from here, the solutions are about returning to something such as a religious revival, inculcating a strong and powerful awareness and deep knowledge of Western Civilization and also how it must be fought for at ever level in academia, in international diplomacy, on the battlefield and in the neighborhood churches and int the public schools and scouting.
A new awareness of who WE are and how small a piece of the world the West owns (or did), but how do you get there?
BUMP!
How soon we forget...
Germanwings Flight 9525 was a scheduled international passenger flight from Barcelona–El Prat Airport in Spain to Düsseldorf Airport in Germany. The flight was operated by Germanwings, a low-cost carrier owned by the German airline Lufthansa. On 24 March 2015, the Airbus A320 operating the flight crashed 100 km north-west of Nice in the French Alps, killing all 150 people on board.
...muslime suicide pilot
EgyptAir Flight 990 was a scheduled flight from Los Angeles International Airport to Cairo International Airport, with a stop at John F. Kennedy International Airport, New York City. On October 31, 1999, the Boeing 767 operating the route crashed into the Atlantic Ocean about 60 miles (100 km) south of Nantucket Island, Massachusetts, killing all 217 passengers and crew on board, making it the deadliest aviation disaster for EgyptAir.
...muslime suicide pilot
There is supposed to be an Israeli national security requirement that only pilots from an approved list of countries are permitted to fly into Israel and Oman was not one of them.
How is that requirement enforced on both sides and how did the Omani pilot/hijacker manage to evade being flagged in the first place?
I think the same will be said about humans controlling their own cars.
Two-lane hiways with closing speeds of well over 100 mph with human levels of concentration and distraction.
What if the ground controllers are terrorists too?
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