Mehul Srivastava and Peter Campbell in London and Neri Zilber in Tel Aviv Published October 1 2026
For Israelis watching the emergency landing of Flydubai flight 1073 on Wednesday, the events of the attack echoed a painful history of aircraft hijackings. Between 1968 and 1986, Palestinian militants hijacked or attempted to take over at least a dozen planes. Many of the attacks were supported by leftist groups in Europe and elsewhere. The impetus for the chaos on board the flight from Dubai to Tel Aviv is still unknown. The United Arab Emirates on Thursday said it was investigating whether the attack — in which one pilot assaulted the other in an apparent attempt to crash the plane — was premeditated or connected to “terrorist activity”. Authorities have not so far labelled it a hijacking, although the aircraft issued a 7500 code that is used in such incidents.
Among the most infamous hijackers of past decades was Leila Khaled, the Palestinian militant who orchestrated the 1969 takeover of a TWA flight from Rome to Tel Aviv, forcing the pilot at gunpoint to fly to Damascus instead. That hijacking heralded years of headline-grabbing assaults on commercial flights and civilians connected to Israel. Planes were often diverted to airfields in hostile countries, and their passengers were swapped for mostly Palestinian prisoners. Notable attacks on planes linked to Israel include the July 1968 hijacking of an El Al flight by three men affiliated with the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, which was diverted to Algiers and triggered a 40-day hostage crisis ending in a prisoner swap. In September 1970, PFLP militants simultaneously took over three aircraft, flying two to Dawson’s Field in Jordan and one to Cairo, holding mostly Israeli and male American hostages before swapping them for four PFLP prisoners, including Leila Khaled. In October 1972, Lufthansa flight 615A was hijacked after departing Damascus, forced to circle Zagreb airport with low fuel until German authorities freed the three surviving perpetrators of the Munich Olympics massacre. In 1976, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s brother Yoni was killed while rescuing over 100 predominantly Israeli and Jewish hostages from an Air France flight hijacked to Uganda and welcomed by dictator Idi Amin. Another hijacking attempt occurred in 1986 when militants seized a Pan Am flight demanding the release of Palestinian prisoners.
Little is known about the assailant aboard the Flydubai flight, though Israeli authorities have said he was Omani. After speaking to Netanyahu on Wednesday, Donald Trump said it remained unclear whether the pilot was “a terrorist or perhaps a whackjob”. In recent decades, Israelis have grown accustomed to an extra-vigilant system of protecting planes, especially for the national flag carrier El Al. Many added security measures were designed to stop hijackers from sneaking themselves and their weapons on board. Some of the biggest changes to aeroplanes globally were made after 9/11, when more cockpit locks were added. Israeli carriers had started the process earlier, including steps to prevent would-be hijackers from shooting through the cockpit door, said a veteran of the Israeli aviation security industry. “Israel was the pioneer in the field” of aviation security, going back to the early 1970s, he said.
Source: Financial Times Companies · Summarized by HeadlinesBriefing