On Wednesday, CNN’s The Arena With Kasie Hunt gave the recent stabbing of a Flydubai’s captain by his first officer mid-flight a much more mundane approach. Citing it as an “attempted” “suicide by pilot” rather than a potential hijacking, CNN’s Aviation Correspondent Pete Muntean compared this flight to past pilots commandeering their planes into danger.
In an interview with CNN’s Jerusalem Correspondent Jeremy Diamond, an unidentified Flydubai passenger recounted, with detail, the timeline of events beginning with the pilots’ altercation in the cockpit. The passenger described the consequential events that followed: “We just felt the plane drop completely and start spinning a little and everyone was screaming. There were children crying and, uh, it was just like a death in front of our eyes moment.”
In the aftermath of a group of passengers rushing to the cockpit to seize the assailant, the unidentified passenger described the environment within the plane and the communication among passengers onboard: “Yeah, there was chaos. There were like a few people up front. Um, and then someone kept coming and updating us. And then they told us that there's a terrorist on board.”
CNN is so desperate to downplay this latest instance of Islamic terrorism and to contradict Netanyahu, that they're actively dismissing accounts from people who were on the plane and claiming the flydubai hijacking was just an instance of "suicide by pilot." https://t.co/rQXwOP88uK
— Nicholas Fondacaro (@NickFondacaro) September 30, 2026
Despite the firsthand experience described by the passenger just moments after the landing in Tel Aviv and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s claim of the incident as being “an act of terror,” Muntean had a different idea, trying to downgrade the incident from suicide for political cause to a run-of-the-mill mental health crisis:
There was the EgyptAir crash 990 back in 1999. The flight the first officer tried to crash the airplane, according to the national transportation safety board.
Of course, you probably remember the Germanwings crash in 2015 when the first officer crashed the airplane into the French Alps after the captain was locked out of the cockpit.
And then, of course, there was this Horizon Air incident on the west coast back in 2023, when an off duty pilot in the cockpit tried to shut down the engines of the plane. The pilot and first officer of that flight were able to subdue him. Thankfully, nobody hurt in that flight.
For the lack of research done by Muntean, it’s easy to assume that the pilot’s fondness for violence and subsequent stabbing spree was a direct result of him being suicidal. According to him, it just made sense for this instance to be the same case as a few other pilots from years past.
Yet, for all the evidence, Muntean failed to question the reality of who was on the flight and where it was going. It doesn’t take a genius to question whether or not the plane full of Israeli citizens on its way to Tel Aviv was an underlying reason for the aggressor’s actions.
The transcript is below. Click "expand" to read:
CNN’s The Arena With Kasie Hunt
September 30, 2026
04:37:57 p.m. Eastern(...)
PETE MUNTEAN (CNN AVIATION CORRESPONDENT): Want you to listen now to what one passenger told our Jeremy Diamond at Ben Gurion International Airport in Tel Aviv after another Flydubai flight was able to fly these passengers to their ultimate destination. Listen.
[CUT TO VIDEO]
UNIDENTIFIED PASSENGER: We just felt the plane drop completely and start spinning a little and everyone was screaming. There were children crying and, uh, it was just like a death in front of our eyes moment.
[TRANSITION]
JEREMY DIAMOND: You saw people kind of rushing down the aisles to get to the cockpit?
UNIDENTIFIED PASSENGER: Yeah, there was chaos. There were like a few people up front. Um, and then someone kept coming and updating us. And then they told us that there's a terrorist on board.
[END OF VIDEO]
MUNTEAN: Now, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is calling this an act of terror, although this does sound a lot like at least attempted or successful suicide by pilot attempts in the past.
There was the EgyptAir crash 990 back in 1999. The flight the first officer tried to crash the airplane, according to the national transportation safety board.
Of course, you probably remember the Germanwings crash in 2015 when the first officer crashed the airplane into the French Alps after the captain was locked out of the cockpit.
And then, of course, there was this Horizon Air incident on the west coast back in 2023, when an off duty pilot in the cockpit tried to shut down the engines of the plane. The pilot and first officer of that flight were able to subdue him. Thankfully, nobody hurt in that flight.
Still a lot to come out in the investigation here, Kasie.
KASIE HUNT: All right, Pete Muntean for us. Pete, always great to see you. Thank you very much for that.
(...)
