Aircraft hijackings have long occupied a familiar place in international cinema, particularly in thrillers built around extraordinary heroism. Sometimes the films dramatise real events. In others, an unlikely character appears almost by accident, somehow becoming the only person capable of saving everyone on board.
The formula has produced everything from serious action films that inflate the hero’s abilities to almost impossible levels, to comedies built around aircraft that seem destined to crash.
In many of these films, passengers become hostages to hijackers making political demands. Then, inevitably, one passenger steps forward to end the crisis. He defeats the hijackers, reaches the cockpit and, in the most cinematic version of events, somehow flies the aircraft himself despite possibly not even possessing a driver’s licence.
That familiar Hollywood scenario has now found an unexpected parallel in the account of an Israeli plumber who claimed he pulled back on the controls of a Flydubai aircraft and stabilised it.
The Israeli Plumber Who Apparently Became a Pilot
The Israeli plumber was later received by Prime Minister of the Israeli occupation government Benjamin Netanyahu, his clothes covered in blood, as he recounted how he had supposedly pulled back on the aircraft’s controls after it entered a near-vertical descent and returned it to a stable flight path.
But the dramatic account began to unravel after Flydubai disclosed that reserve pilots were on board the aircraft and that they were the ones who took control of the plane and carried out the emergency landing at Tabuk Airport.
The scene bears an uncanny resemblance to a genre Hollywood has spent decades perfecting.
Air Force One: The President Becomes the Action Hero
One of the most famous aircraft hijacking films is the 1997 film Air Force One.
The film begins with the arrest of a former Kazakh dictator in a joint American-Russian operation. After the US president visits Moscow and begins his return journey, six people disguised in official uniforms and carrying press credentials manage to infiltrate the presidential aircraft, seize control and hijack it.
The president manages to hide in the lower section of the aircraft while the hijackers threaten to kill one hostage every half-hour.
Rather than remaining hidden, however, the president gathers the weapons available on board and begins confronting members of the hijacking group one by one as he attempts to reach the vice president.
Once the hijackers discover that he is still aboard, they seize members of his family to pressure him.
The president ultimately kills the hijackers, including their leader, before the badly damaged aircraft is forced into an emergency landing with assistance from American fighter jets flying alongside it.
Executive Decision: No Flying Experience? No Problem
Another film featuring a hero who has no experience flying an aircraft but nevertheless ends up controlling one and bringing it to safety is the 1996 film Executive Decision.
Its story begins with a failed raid by an American special forces team in Italy attempting to recover a stolen Soviet nerve agent.
Five months later, the nerve agent is discovered aboard a passenger aircraft travelling from Athens to Washington with hundreds of people on board. Armed men seize the aircraft after take-off and take control of the cockpit.
Intelligence analyst David Grant comes to suspect that the hijacking is merely cover for a far larger plot: detonating the aircraft and dispersing the toxic agent over Washington.
A special forces team and a specialist engineer are therefore sent aboard a small aircraft and attempt to enter the hijacked passenger jet through an access point beneath it.
Grant, who has no experience flying aircraft, eventually finds himself facing the controls while the special forces team battles the hijackers and neutralises the bomb.
With the aircraft badly damaged, Grant takes control with the assistance of a flight attendant and eventually manages an emergency landing at a military base, bringing all the passengers to safety.
Con Air: Another Passenger Takes Over
Few aircraft films embraced the genre’s dramatic excesses more enthusiastically than the 1997 film Con Air, which follows an aircraft used to transport some of the most dangerous prisoners in the United States from one state to another.
Nicolas Cage plays Cameron Poe, a former soldier being transported aboard the aircraft ahead of his release in another state after completing his sentence.
During the flight, the prisoners execute a plan to seize the aircraft. They take control of the cockpit, kill the guards and change course towards another landing site intended to facilitate their escape.
Poe finds himself trapped in the middle of the hijacking and decides to cooperate with authorities on the ground.
A series of confrontations then unfolds aboard the aircraft, with the hijackers being killed one after another. During the final confrontation while the aircraft remains airborne, Poe kills hijacker leader Cyrus and attempts to control the plane and make an emergency landing.
The aircraft eventually crashes among buildings in Las Vegas, while Poe survives and returns to his family.
When the Real Story Starts Looking Like the Movie
That is cinema. The hero does not need to be a pilot. He simply reaches the cockpit, grabs the controls and saves the day.
The Flydubai story acquired much the same cinematic quality after the Israeli passenger’s account was elevated into a dramatic tale of individual heroism, only for the airline’s disclosure about reserve pilots on board to complicate that version of events.
Social media users also mocked what they described as visual inconsistencies surrounding accounts from Israeli passengers about the aircraft plunging from a significant altitude.
For an industry that has spent decades producing films about ordinary passengers becoming pilots at precisely the right moment, Hollywood may finally be facing competition from an unexpected source.
