Should cockpits stay locked from the inside? Flydubai stabbing raises flight security questions

Two pilots are normally required on deck under airline safety rules. Photograph: Idealink Photography/AlamyView image in fullscreenTwo pilots are normally required on deck under airline safety rules. Photograph: Idealink Photography/AlamyAnalysisShould cockpits stay locked from the inside? Flydubai stabbing raises flight security questionsGwyn Topham Transport correspondentCo-pilot who attacked captain in apparent attempt to crash flight casts doubt over locked-door policy

Motive behind flydubai stabbing unknown as investigation opens

Cockpit security on planes will come under renewed scrutiny after passengers and one wounded pilot joined forces to prevent flydubai flight FZ 1073 from crashing.

With more than 170 people, mostly Israeli, on board the jet heading from Dubai to Tel Aviv, some have spoken of averting “Israel’s 9/11”. However, the changes made to plane design after the terrorist hijackings in the US a quarter of a century ago, locking cockpit doors from the inside, have divided expert opinion.

Wednesday’s traumatic events, where one pilot stabbed another and apparently tried to crash the plane, again raises the question of where the biggest threat lies.

Read more“We have as an industry lost more lives on commercial aircraft as a result of aircraft-assisted suicide since 9/11 than we have due to terrorism,” says Philip Baum, an international aviation security expert.

“And in most of those cases, it was because we had created a fortress that could not be broken into by the good guys who were outside the flight deck to neutralise the rogue individuals – usually pilots inside the cockpit.”

On the flydubai flight, despite being stabbed, the captain Smit Machchhar managed to resist his attacker, the unnamed Omani co-pilot. Crucially, he was also able to ensure help reached him from the cabin by making sure the doors could be breached.

Two pilots are normally required on deck under safety rules – primarily discussed for if one gets sick, rather than goes rogue. Since 9/11, commercial aircraft have also had locked doors in place where the pilot effectively holds the key. The configuration of locks can vary and while crew have access codes for emergencies, the pilot can normally override attempts to gain access – a system designed with hijackers in mind.

The crash of GermanWings flight 4U9525 in 2015 was, perhaps until this week, the most incontrovertible demonstration of the danger it posed: the captain locked out by a suicidal co-pilot who deliberately crashed the plane in the Alps, killing 150 people.

It had been preceded by a smaller and less reported Mozambique Airlines plane crash in 2013, killing 33, that was judged by investigators to have been suicide by pilot, with the co-pilot apparently locked out.

Questions also remain over the role of pilot intent in major disasters whose causes have yet to be proved – not least the mystery of Malaysia Airilnes flight MH370, as well as the Air India crash in Ahmedabad in 2025, or China Eastern in 2022.

Without malign intent, doors can be opened in incidents of “pilot incapacitation”, such as heart attacks. A Lufthansa plane flew for 10 minutes over Spain in 2024 with no one at the controls when the captain went to the bathroom and was locked out of the cabin after the co-pilot blacked out.

The captain reached the deck to land the plane using an emergency entry door code – but a conscious attacker could have blocked the request.

On the balance of risks, Baum argues, there needs to be some kind of override system for the cockpit doors – whether timed, or from the ground. But preserving security begins well before the cockpit doors: ‘The primary method is to ensure that the people that you are employing have gone through extensive background checks, gone through medicals, psychological appraisals – and that that process doesn’t stop once employment commences.”

With the motives of the Omani co-pilot in the latest attack still as yet unknown, Israel is introducing measures to do greater background screening of pilots, while flydubai has cancelled further Tel Aviv flights, and British ministers have said they will “be looking at” the safety of flights to Israel.

Pilots may be reluctant to fly routes where they undergo greater screening – or indeed officially admit to mental health issues, a much more common threat than radicalisation.

The UK pilots’ union Balpa said it would “caution against premature speculation and urge all parties to allow the relevant authorities to investigate without interference”.

The full facts of the co-pilot’s actions are yet to be established, but, says Baum: “Whatever happened yesterday, we know that that cockpit barrier can impede a rescue attempt if there are rogue pilots.”