On September 30 the copilot of FlyDubai 1073, Dubai to Tel Aviv, took the cockpit crash ax to his captain and put a 737 with 182 people aboard into a 16,000-foot dive. Passengers forced the door, pulled him off and tied him with earphone cables, and two off-duty pilots landed the jet in Saudi Arabia.
He had passed every checkpoint. He had the badge. The UAE prosecutor calls it a terrorist attack. The vetting was the perimeter, and he was already inside it. The cockpit is only the loudest version of the insider threat. The same kind of badge sits with the night operator at your water plant and the contractor at the gate down the road.
Today’s SITREP covers what is confirmed and what is not, the early warning signs, from a second crew member stepping into the cockpit to re-check notices going out to badge holders, and three moves: sit where you can reach the problem, audit who holds a key to your life this weekend, and agree on the family phrase that means move now. 💺