Category Archives: Air transport

Flydubai captain describes blocking axe blows as co-pilot attacked him

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Capt Smit Machchhar said he screamed for help as he reached to open the cockpit door on flight FZ1073

The captain of a flydubai flight who was attacked by a co-pilot who intended to crash the plane has described ⁠blocking axe blows to his head and screaming for help as he reached to open the cockpit door.

Capt Smit ⁠Machchhar has been hailed ⁠as a ​hero for his role in averting disaster on the flight from Dubai to Tel Aviv last month, helping to thwart what the UAE ⁠attorney general has said was an attempted suicide attack by the co-pilot who had intended to crash the plane into Ben Gurion airport.

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Selma Blair ‘did not intend to harm anyone’ during airplane incident, representatives say

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Actor experienced a ‘medical emergency’ on flight during which she allegedly injured crew members, statement says

Actor Selma Blair did not mean to hurt anyone during the recent flight which led to her arrest on allegations that she assaulted a pair of cabin crew members, a police officer and a nurse, her representatives said on Friday in a statement that characterized the episode as a medical emergency.

The lengthy statement also dismissed prior media coverage of Blair’s arrest after a Delta Air Lines flight from Los Angeles to New York as unsympathetic and inaccurate, singling out reporting from several outlets alleging that she tried to open the door of the airplane that she and her fellow passengers were on.

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Two people killed in light aircraft crash near Loch Lomond

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Police Scotland says boy, 16, and 80-year-old man died in incident north-east of village of Drymen in Stirling

A 16-year-old boy and an 80-year-old man have been killed in a light aircraft crash near Loch Lomond in Scotland.

Emergency services were called to reports of an incident north-east of the village of Drymen, Stirling, at about 4.45pm on Friday.

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UK holiday demand may have peaked amid cost of living squeeze, says travel industry

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Spain remains most popular destination as Britons book later in hope of better deals, Abta report finds

The UK’s cost of living squeeze means fewer people plan to ringfence money for holidays abroad next year, the travel industry has warned.

Despite war, wildfires and EES border checks, the numbers of Britons taking holidays climbed back to pre-pandemic levels this year – but rising costs may mean the numbers have peaked, according to an annual travel industry report on Tuesday.

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Twelve killed and hundreds injured in Houthi attack at Riyadh airport

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Donald Trump evaluating whether US should join Saudi strikes against the Iran-backed Yemeni rebels

The latest attack on the international airport in Saudi Arabia’s capital of Riyadh killed 12 people and injured more than 300 others, civil aviation authorities said early on Sunday, with some in a critical condition. A Saudi-led coalition blamed Iran-backed Houthi rebels in neighbouring Yemen.

A missile struck a King Khalid international airport complex housing terminals 3 and 4 for domestic flights, a regional official said, speaking on condition of anonymity because they weren’t authorised to speak to the media.

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Flydubai co-pilot planned suicide attack on Israeli airport, UAE prosecutors say

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Hammam al-Hammami is believed to have been targeting the passenger terminal at Ben Gurion airport near Tel Aviv

The co-pilot who tried to seize control of a passenger jet flying from Dubai to Tel Aviv last week was planning to launch a suicide attack targeting the passenger terminal at Israel’s international airport, prosecutors in the United Arab Emirates said on Friday.

Hammam al-Hammami attacked the plane’s Indian pilot with an emergency axe, but failed to prevent his badly injured colleague from opening the cockpit’s security door to allow passengers to overpower his assailant.

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Six presumed dead as Coast Guard suspends search for missing medical plane near Nantucket

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Medical transport plane flying from Bermuda to Boston crashed off coast of Massachusetts early Saturday

Six people are presumed dead after the US Coast Guard on Sunday suspended its search for survivors of a medical transport plane crash off the coast of Massachusetts early the previous day.

The aircraft, which was flying from Bermuda to Boston, lost contact with ground authorities at about 2am on Saturday, and the Coast Guard located a debris field near the island of Nantucket later that day.

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Suicide by plane or terrorism? Speculation over motive in flight 1073 attack

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Experts sceptical flydubai co-pilot’s only motivation was to end his own life and say key question is means of radicalisation

At about 9.30 on Wednesday morning local time, Tali Manes was taking her six-year-old daughter, Nina, to the toilet on the regular flydubai flight from Dubai to Tel Aviv when she heard a series of heavy blows against the cockpit door.

Manes, an Israeli bank executive, immediately told a flight attendant seated nearby that something was wrong. When he did not react, she shouted at him: “Something is happening in there!” Seconds later, the man “simply went to the [cockpit] door and opened it”, Manes told Israel’s Channel 12 TV.

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‘I was fighting for my life’: Indian pilot hailed as hero recalls flydubai cockpit attack

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Smit Machchhar says in video call with Indian PM that he realised if he did not get up ‘passengers would lose their lives’

The Indian pilot who helped thwart an apparent attempt to crash a flydubai flight to Tel Aviv said his faith and his desire to save his passengers allowed him to make a “last push” to open the cockpit door as he fought for his life.

Capt Smit Machchhar, who was recovering in an Abu Dhabi hospital, described to India’s prime minister, Narendra Modi, how he helped save the plane and its more than 170 passengers.

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Friday briefing: How we covered the flydubai incident as it unfolded

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In today’s newsletter: When a passenger plane plunges 17,000ft amid claims of terrorism, hijacking and geopolitical intrigue, Guardian journalists have to try and separate fact from fiction in real time

Good morning. Shocking news of a cockpit stabbing. Graphic footage of bloodied crew members. Mid-air testimony from terrified passengers.

This was the tenor of the heart-in-mouth reporting as the horrifying events unfolded onboard flight FZ 1073 to Tel Aviv: the early morning budget flight that plummeted 17,000ft in under two minutes before the courageous intervention of passengers and crew averted an apparent hijacking, potentially saving the lives of not just the 170+ passengers and crew on board, but many more.

UK politics | Ministers are working up sweeping plans for welfare changes including scrapping a key disability benefit for under-25s and replacing it with a multibillion-pound package of support to get into work.

Northern Ireland | Talks aimed at resolving the Drumcree parade dispute have broken up without agreement, with Northern Ireland secretary Chris Bryant describing the situation as being between a “rock and a hard place”.

US news | Tennessee’s governor has suspended all executions in the state and ordered an independent inquiry after a botched attempt to put a condemned inmate to death on Wednesday night.

AI | When prompted, AI chat bots will edit images to remove the hijabs from Muslim women, a violation of one of the world’s most common and visible expressions of faith.

Europe news | A fast-growing protest by high-school students over long hours, teacher shortages and decaying facilities has escalated into “urban violence”, the French government has warned.

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UK airlines to be banned from charging parents to sit with children

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Planned rule change forms part of Burnham’s bid to crack down on the ‘little charges that add up’

Airlines will be blocked from charging parents extra to sit with their children on planes, according to government plans.

The new rule would require airlines to seat passengers aged under 14 next to their parents or an accompanying adult free of charge. Passengers will also no longer need to pay to tweak the name on their flight booking if they need to correct a mistake.

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‘Whoever is hearing me, we need help’: how flight 1073 survived its 17,000ft plunge

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On morning service from Dubai to Tel Aviv, 150 passengers witnessed a horrific cockpit assault and a daring rescue

As flight FZ 1073 soared west over the waters of the Gulf towards Israel, its passengers may have bemoaned a 20-minute delay at takeoff. For a low-cost airline route, flydubai’s daily service to Tel Aviv is usually convenient and reliable. The nonstop flight takes about three and a half hours and departs early enough from Dubai that it usually lands at Ben Gurion airport at about 9am local time.

That was not the case for Wednesday’s catastrophic flight. The passenger jet never made it to its scheduled destination. Instead, it dropped thousands of feet in seconds before limping down to make an emergency landing in Saudi Arabia – perhaps miraculously, since photos suggested a large part of the tail of the aircraft was missing.

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Israel-bound passenger plane makes emergency landing in Saudi Arabia after reported fight between pilots

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Israeli officials scrambled fighter jets amid fears of possible hijacking before plane landed at Tabuk airport

A commercial plane travelling from Dubai in the United Arab Emirates to Israel has been forced to make an emergency landing in Saudi Arabia, after an apparent brawl between its pilots prompted distress signals that briefly raised fears of an attempted hijacking.

The flydubai flight was over Jordan when it diverted to Saudi Arabia, transmitting three emergency signals, one of which indicated a possible unlawful interference.

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‘Miracle on the Hudson’ pilot Chesly Sullenberger inducted into US Aviation Hall of Fame

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Sullenberger landed a disabled passenger plane safely in the Hudson River in 2009 without any loss of life

Capt Chesley “Sully” Sullenberger III – the pilot known for safely landing a US Airways flight in New York City’s Hudson River during a 2009 emergency – has been inducted into the US’s National Aviation Hall of Fame, two months after he went public with an Alzheimer’s disease diagnosis.

Sullenberger, 75, received the honor during a ceremony held in Washington DC on Thursday, 17 years after he engineered what has become widely known as the Miracle on the Hudson.

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Airlines urge action after UK flights delayed and cancelled again

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Nats says fault at Prestwick has been ‘fixed’ after airports in Scotland, northern England and Northern Ireland are hit

Airlines have called for “action and accountability” over the UK’s air traffic control services after a technical issue led to flights being disrupted for the second time in a fortnight.

Dozens were cancelled and others severely delayed after a fault on Monday morning at National Air Traffic Services (Nats), this time at its second control centre at Prestwick in South Ayrshire.

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Flight chaos for hundreds of thousands was caused in ‘millisecond’ by software error

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Error first occurred at 10am but major incident was not declared until 12.30pm, says report

A software defect in part of the UK’s air traffic control system corrupted flight data “in the space of a millisecond”, leading to a six-hour outage and mass airline cancellations and delays across the UK last week, National Air Traffic Services has said.

But ministers said the Nats report into the incident still left questions unanswered, saying they needed “to urgently understand why this issue was not discovered and fixed before it caused chaos”.

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Airlines should pay for CO2 removal if Heathrow expands, say climate advisers

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Climate Change Committee says government cannot expand airport without requiring aviation industry to clean up its emissions

Heathrow airport should be allowed to expand only if airlines pay for the removal of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere, the government’s climate advisers have said.

Building a third runway and new terminals, as some in government want to do, would breach the UK’s carbon budgets and make reaching net zero by 2050 impossible, on current policies, according to the Climate Change Committee.

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UK air traffic control chaos disrupts flights for hundreds of thousands of passengers

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More than 1,000 flights cancelled with problems continuing on Wednesday and airlines calling for overhaul after third incident in just over three years

Flight delays and cancellations were expected to continue into Wednesday at UK airports after another air traffic control failure kept planes grounded for hours, affecting hundreds of thousands of passengers.

At least 177 flights scheduled for Wednesday to and from UK airports had been cancelled, plane tracking site Flightradar24 said, “nearly all at London Heathrow”. More than 1,000 were cancelled by about 8pm on Tuesday.

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Pilots tried to abort landing seconds before deadly Amazon cargo plane crash that killed five

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The five people killed were employees of an aircraft cleaning company who were in a van struck by the plane after it overran the Miami airport runway

Officials in Florida on Tuesday said evidence collected from Saturday’s Amazon cargo plane crash at Miami international airport suggests the pilots considered aborting the flight’s landing before it crashed and killed five people on the ground.

At a press conference Tuesday evening, officials from the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) released data from the plane’s “black box” flight data recorder, which was recovered from the wreckage on Monday, indicating pilots initiated a “go-around”, or aborted landing, seconds before impact.

Reuters contributed reporting

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Volcanic eruption halts flights at Jakarta and seven other Indonesian airports

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Ash cloud from Anak Krakatau affects hundreds of flights and some school and fishing activities

Indonesia halted operations at eight airports on Sunday, including from its main international hub, affecting hundreds of flights as a result of an ash cloud from the Anak Krakatau volcano.

Saturday’s eruption, which produced lava and booming sounds that were heard up to 435 miles (700km) away, according to Indonesia’s geology agency, also interrupted some school activities and fishing. Two more eruptions were recorded on Sunday.

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