WASHINGTON: The old saying that lies go halfway across the world before truth gets its shoes on was on full display in the hours after the Fly Dubai hijacking episode. What began as a genuine mid-air emergency on flydubai Flight FZ1073 from Dubai to Tel Aviv rapidly spawned a swirl of inaccurate claims, misidentifications, and social-media distortions, and it wasn’t until Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu went public with details of the heroic act by the pilot, Capt Smit Macchchar, whom he clearly identified as Indian, that the world began to acknowledge an extraordinary feat of courage.Even US President Donald Trump briefly acknowledged the bravery of the pilot before digressing into a vivid description of how the attacker was taken down by Israeli passengers. “The pilot, in bad shape, had the sense to open the door!” Trump said, calling him a “hero” and adding, “it seems as though the copilot was perhaps a terrorist or perhaps a whack job”.The MAGA boss later used the episode to shill for Boeing on his Truth Social platform, posting, “Congratulations to the GREAT Boeing Company for producing a plane, the 737 Max, that was able to withstand G Forces and Strain far beyond what it was designed and expected to do. It was an amazing show of precise and powerful structural planning and design.”“It is about time that The Boeing Company, which builds, by far, the finest commercial airliners in the sky, was given credit for this airplane’s incredible “genius!” To Kelly Ortberg, and all of his officers and associates at Boeing, congratulations on a job well done!!!” Trump, chief spokesman for American products, wrote.However, many experts acknowledged that but for the heroism of the Indian pilot and the Israeli plumber, who led the passenger effort to subdue the hijacker co-pilot, the plane, regardless of how it was built, may have been dust in the desert. Professional pilots emphasized how extraordinarily difficult Captain Machchhar’s situation was due to post-9/11 reinforced cockpit door protocols, which have resulted in cockpit doors being armored and locked to prevent outside entry.Pilots pointed out that Machchhar fighting through stab wounds to manually override and unlock the door was the single critical move that allowed off-duty pilots and passengers to breach the cockpit and save the aircraft. Aviators also lauded Machchhar’s muscle memory and tactical awareness – squawking the hijacking emergency code, resisting the co-pilot’s attempts to put the Boeing 737 into a dive, and unlocking the door before losing consciousness or control. Many noted that when the aircraft entered a tailspin and lost altitude, Machchhar held onto the controls long enough to buy time for the door to be opened, calling his actions “a masterclass in airmanship under pressure.”Still, the initial hours after the attempted hijacking and crash saw much dust and distortions on social media. Early reporting and online speculation filled information gaps with errors. Some initial accounts and circulating posts described the event in ways that blurred whether it was an external hijacking, an internal cockpit struggle, or something else. Some outlets and social-media claims floated differing nationalities for the pilots, including identifying the captain who was stabbed as Emirati.As usual, social media vermin from Pakistan, where most of the world’s most wanted terrorists, from Osama bin Laden to Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, go to roost, jumped in with vile theories of an Indian-Israeli/RAW-Mossad plot. Some Pakistan-based accounts posted fabricated videos and claims linking a purported RAW operative named Raghav Menon to a plot.It wasn’t till Netanyahu himself went on air and confirmed the heroism of Capt Macchchar after ascertaining facts from flyers returning to Tel Aviv that the rest of the world, including Trump, acknowledged the Indian pilot’s role. “I hope the entire nation of India is proud of Capt Machchhar! He is a hero in Israel today!” the US ambassador to Israel, Mike Huckabee, said on Thursday.And indeed he is. “In honor of the Indian pilot who saved all the Israelis, I propose every Israeli order Indian food tomorrow. 10 million Indian lunches ordered tomorrow on Wolt (the Israeli version of Zomato/Swiggy. It’s the least we can do,” David Keyes, a former spokesman & advisor to Netanyahu posted on X.“I’m starting a new airline. Just Indian pilots and Israeli passengers. Safest airline in the world,” he joked in another post.
