Now there are two additional fly Dubai pilots who have now been arrested on in Dubai and this is on the suspicion of planning a terror attack. >> Pakistani pilots and caven crew have been completely banned from flying to Israel by Air France. In fact, flight crew from Pakistan are among 31 countries that the French airline has banned following the Fly Dubai attempted terror strike. >> There is a major update in the Fly Dubai hijacking from September 30th. uh flight uh FZ1073 was in route from Dubai to Tel Aviv. If you recall in a brief recap, that flight was hijacked by the murderous co-pilot, a guy by the name of Hamam al-Hamami. He actually grabbed the crash axe, attacked the captain. Passengers intervened. They pulled the airplane out of a steep dive. There was a dead-heading crew on the back that was able to safely fly the airplane even though they had lost the rudder uh to an airport Tubac in uh Saudi Arabia and then the bad guys were arrested. Now having said that there are major updates uh and going forward these have huge implications. The first update is this. There were two additional arrests just made last week in connection with this hijacking. And in those two arrests were two Fly Dubai pilots. Not the ones on the airplane, but two additional pilots for a total of three pilots. There is the evil animal that was in the right seat of flight 1073. And then there are two additional pilots. Both are Maldivian nationals. All three pilots. right now. The the Alamami is not a Maldivian national, but the two in addition to the one that's already been arrested, all three pilots knew each other and all three lived in the same building. All right, does that sound a little too coincidental for you? It does to me. And so, if I'm the authorities over there, I'm real interested in talking to these two guys. So, this is according to multiple media outlets, including NDTV in India. I'll give you a list at the end of all the different media sources that we cited on all of this. Lots of corroboration on on all the information that we're going to share with you. Now, today, let me give you a timeline. And the timeline uh and there's actually additional news coming out of Israel. Uh as of this morning, Israel has made some moves that I think you're going to find fascinating. Hold on to that. We're going to get to that before the end. All right. The timeline goes like this. This um I don't know how to describe this guy, but he's just a beast. He's an evil animal. the co-pilot on the flight. According to the UAE, United Arab Emirates prosecutors, in 2017, Al Hamami begins consuming extremist jihadi materials. Specifically, he was looking at literature and materials on how to carry out a terrorist attack 911 style. Well, that's exactly what he was trying to do uh on that flight, plate 1073. Now, uh, in January of 2026, just a few years later, about 9 years later, Al Hamami joins Fly Dubai. He had been, uh, he had been a pilot with another airline prior to that. They had uh, taken him off the schedule due to his kind of uh, bad guy leanings. They they had a whiff of it. They knew something was up with this guy. They took him off the schedule. They put him in administrative duties. He quits that job, gets hired by Fly Dubai. fly Dubai. Uh, he passes all of their, and I'm going to put it in air quotes, security checks and flies at least two familiarization flights from Dubai into Tel Aviv prior to the one where he attacked Captain Schmidt. So, he does all of that. Uh, he's practicing, he's preparing, he's confessed all of this now in during his interrogations. He told him exactly what he was up to. two familiarization flights prior to um the attack on um Captain Schmidt. Now on September 30th, flight 1073, uh he attacks Captain Schmidt Mahar with the cockpit axe. So how did he get access to the axe? Cuz the axe is on the wall behind the captain. So the FO sits over on the right side of the cockpit. Captain sits over on the left side. You can't reach the axe from the from the right seat. you have to kind of unbuckle to get out quite a ways to be able to grab that axe. And so I think perhaps this is conjecture on my part, he was hoping that the captain would get up and go to the bathroom and if he did that then he'd be able to kind of just lock the door uh after he left and be all alone in the cockpit. Uh he doesn't do that and so he thinks, well somehow I got to take out the captain. So he then says to the captain, uh I'm a Muslim. I need to pray. Can I get out of my seat and do my my prayers? We're still an hour out from Tel Aviv. There's not much going on right now at this portion of the flight. Um, Captain Mccor agrees, says, "Yep, sure. Okay, go ahead. There's a little bit of space in the 737. There's not a lot where you could conceivably kneel down and do your prayers." So, he gets out of the seat, but it's all a ruse. He's not interested in prayer, right? He's interested in getting a hold of that crash axe. He removes the crash axe from the wall, strikes the captain in the head. The captain is dazed and confused, but the fight begins. Bloods everywhere. Captain is fighting him for the axe. He gets stabbed multiple times with this axe. The captain has the presence of mind to reach over and open up the door. As he opens up the door, a lady who's standing there uh near the first class bathroom with her daughter sees the melee and the blood in the cockpit and screams. As she screams, her husband comes to her assistance. Other able-bodied passengers rush the cockpit. They pull Captain Schmidt out. They subdue the co-pilot now who's trying to destroy anything he can in the cockpit at this moment. It's not clear when he put the airplane into a nose dive. Just sometime during that melee with the passengers, the airplane goes into a nose dive and then the deadheading crew members from the back somehow make their way into the cockpit. I'll talk more about that um in just a minute, but the airplane plummets 14 to 16,000 ft according to the ADSB data. Uh, and uh, it's an absolute miracle that they didn't all perish in that moment, but that all the Swiss cheese holes lined up in a good way this time for them to save the day. That was September 30th. You're familiar with that incident. The uh, October 1st, the UAE opens a formal investigation uh, regarding Alami and he is interrogated in the UAE. Then there's kind of a lot of quiet for a while. Now, October 3rd, something else happens. On October 3rd, 2 days later, two additional Fly Dubai pilots are detained by the authorities. Both are Maldivian nationals. The legal allegations against them at this point is unclear, but they've been detained for questioning. They've been arrested. And uh if we find out, we discover that they are friends of Alami. We discover that they are uh neighbors. They live in the same building. That's just a little too coincidental for me. Uh and they're both pilots for the same airline. Now, they haven't released yet whether they believe that these guys were part of a broader terrorist plan, but you can you can glean from the fact that they were arrested that most likely the authorities over there are real keen on wanting to know whether they were or they weren't. All right? And it doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure out this is probably a broader thing. There are some other questions as well and they've been raised by several media outlets uh and some passengers on the airplane about the passivity of the flight attendants on the flight. They didn't seem all that engaged. The passengers are the ones that took over. So again, lots of questions here, right? Going forward, that's October 3rd. Both of these pilots are arrested. We don't find out about this for more than a week that they arrested him. Well, why? I'll answer that in a little bit. October 8th, right? 5 days later, Maldivian news outlet at Hadu reports that the pilots remain in custody and are being questioned. So 5 days after their arrest, they're still being interrogated by UAE authorities. October 9th, the next day, UAE attorney general reveals the intended target of Alami's attack. So when he attacks the captain and tries to take over control of that airplane, it was a suicide attack against the passenger terminal at Bengurian airport in Tel Aviv. That was his plan. So I'm sure they got that from him during the interrogation. They're going to go back and look at his computer. They're going to look at they're going to tear his house apart. They're going to interrogate people close to him. They put it all together and they discover that he was planning to take the airplane and fly it into the passenger terminal at the airport. Al Hamami claims to be acting alone. That was as of October 9th. He claims to be acting alone. Do you believe that? I don't think the authorities believe that. And I certainly don't. But he claims to be acting alone. Why wouldn't he claim to be acting alone? Well, he'd want to cover up for whoever his co-conspirators were. All right. October 10th, India opens a separate investigation and that is an ongoing investigation. Why India? Because Captain Schmidt Mahar is an Indian national. So they open up their own investigation into this. We've got five questions now based on this timeline of events up to today and where we are currently. Number one, what are the pilot screening requirements at Fly Dubai? I would really love to see what it was, how he passed the screening uh there, the security check at Fly Dubai. I bet it was pretty lax. And uh he was hired by another airline to fly for them. He did for a while. Uh they let him go cuz they had suspicions about him and he gets hired by somebody else. How is that even possible? I don't understand. Um they've got to bump it up over there at Fly Dubai. whether Fly Dubai remains in business anymore or not. Um, three of their pilots being detained uh on questions about the terrorist activity. I don't know how an airline survives that. I wouldn't get on a Fly Dubai flight for lover money. All right. Number two, how did Alami get access to the axe in flight? And and did he have help? Now, you're going to go, "Well, he was behind a closed door. He wouldn't need help." No, he'd have to create a ruse to get over on that side of the cockpit to get a hold of the crash ax. That's for sure. But again, the there's a a number one flight attendant that sits up right basically right behind that door. The um the the uh jump seat for the number one flight attendant is the back of it is the door that goes into the cockpit. Now, I don't think the um uh flight attendant was in their jump seat at the time, but they were in the first class galley, which is so small and confined. How can you not hear the screaming and the melee going on up in the cockpit? And how can you discourage other people from intervening? I I don't understand how any of that happens. So, did he have help? Were there other people? Uh there's lots of question marks about that. Number three, uh crew intervention. All right. Uh flight attendants passivity. I just talked about that. And how did the dead-heading crew recognize the peril and get into the cockpit so quickly? That's a that's a big part of this equation. Uh I was on with Piers Morgan and he was interviewing me and he he had he had just concluded an interview with a passenger on the airplane who said that the deadheading crew essentially just kind of catapulted or climbed over the melee in that first class galley. So, you can picture Captain uh Schmidt has been pulled out. He's bleeding. There's somebody attending to him. There's passengers fighting with the co-pilot. They're pulling him out of the cockpit, but he's resisting that. They get him out of the cockpit. All of that is in this really small confined space in that first class galley. There's about eight people up there in this fist fight going on with this guy. And the dead-heading crew comes up from the back. How do they get into the cockpit? He said essentially they just climbed over human bodies to get into the cockpit and the one the first pilot to get in. The the one passenger had grabbed the controls and pulled him back. The dead-heading pilot gets in and basically pushes pulls him off the controls, grabs the controls, the yolk of the airplane, pulls it out of the dive, continues to pull it out of the dive. The passenger has started that process and then manages to get in the seat. You can imagine the mess in that cockpit. I I just can't fathom walking into that situation. And as I reported here, Mentor Pilot was the first one to report this and I checked it out and we're reporting as well. And we believe that both engines failed at some point during that process. Why? Because the emergency uh escape lights, evacuation lights came on during that steep dive of the aircraft. And there is video showing those lights coming on. and there's only four ways for them to come on and all of them have to do with either a total electrical failure or both fuel control switches to cut off or both engines flamed out. So that's kind of um how that happens. Um the other would the fourth would be he could have kicked the switch and turned it on, but it's really kind of clear that the engines weren't running. So with all of that being said, the pilots that the deadheading pilots really really saved the day. All right, so number four, potential accompllices. All right. Well, two Mulivian pilots have been detained because uh they too, it appears according to multiple reports, were planning something similar. The details of that have not come out yet, but it it's believed by Reuters and I believe uh let me see who else was reporting this. Reuters, Indian Express, NDTV, uh, UAE and so forth were reporting that there was a potential of similar attacks and these two pilots were arrested in connection with those plans. So, having said that, you can kind of connect the dots. And number five, safety recommendations. What needs to change moving forward? Man, a whole lot, especially in these Middle Eastern airlines, needs to change. But I would say every airline needs to go back and examine what are their security and screening requirements for pilot hiring. How deeply do they go into a pilot's background? Clearly, when I got hired, it's a whole lot different environment world today than it was back then. So, here are the latest updates now as we know them. All right. Both pilots uh have been deported to Maldivian authorities. So, they were detained by the UAE authorities. They were questioned for 10 days or more over there. The whole thing was kept quiet. I'm going to talk about that in a second. They were deported to Mulivian authorities. They are not being detained according to multiple sources. They were questioned over there and then released. Now, does that mean released back to fly in the cockpit again? I doubt that. I don't think these guys have a job anymore. Um, we're trying to get independent verification as to whether they've been fired, but I'm sure they've been deported from the country. So, number one, they can't even come back into the country. Uh, and so they're they're no threat anymore in terms of flying for fly Dubai. Then here's the one I've been teasing with this whole time. Israel restricts crew members from 31 different nationalities from flying into Israel. That is a recent development just a couple of days ago that Israel reported that they are restricting now crew members. And that's not just cockpit crew members, but that's cabin crew members as well. 31 different countries are on the nofly list into Israel. So a lot of airlines around the the world are kind of scrambling today to go back and look at the nationalities of the crew members who is on those flights going forward for the rest of the month and into next month when they they get their bid. They may not they cannot fly into Israel anymore. So, Israel is really tightening their grip on who gets to fly in and out of their country. Here are the sources that I've cited so far. It's the UAE attorney general statements. He's had a number of different statements uh regarding these various matters. Reuters investigative coverage, Indian Express reports, NDTV over in India, and the Maldivian News uh authority called the addition. All right, those are all the sources we use for coming up with the latest update on this. So my question is this, why the delays in reporting the arrest of these two additional pilots? Why did they get arrested on the 3rd of October? And we didn't find out until basically about the 11th or 12th of October that they had been arrested. Well, that's standard operating procedure for investigations. They're going to make an arrest, but they don't want to tip their hand. They don't want to compromise the investigation because if there's more bad guys out there, they want to know about it. And so they're going to quietly just detain these pilots, question them, get the information out of them that they can to see if it leads any place else. I'm going to glean from this. It didn't lead any place else. So they finally come out and say, "Okay, we've got these two guys. We got the one guy, Alami, in in custody. We're continuing to interrogate him. I don't think there's anybody else connected to this." They release them back to their national country where they are questioned again but then released. They're not detained. So UAE authorities did not want to compromise the investigation is the answer to the question of why it took so long. Both pilots were questioned by Maldo Malddoa Maldivian authorities and then released. I'm assuming that they've lost their jobs and that's a good thing indeed. If there are any more details regarding this incredible incident that happened over there uh in Saudi Arabia, we will come back to you right away giving you any updates on what happened to Flight 1073. Well, now you know. I'm Captain Steve. Fly safe. The day after this incident, we had a fascinating interview with a passenger in seat 8C from that very flight. If you want to see that interview, check out this video.