DUBAI — A FlyDubai flight bound for Tel Aviv completed its journey to Ben Gurion Airport on Tuesday only after the cockpit crew performed the full emergency landing checklist thirty-eight consecutive times over Saudi Arabian airspace, a ritual that began when a passenger assaulted the pilot and ended when the man collapsed from boredom and was restrained with the aircraft's supply of duty-free blankets.
According to the Israeli government, the incident is being treated as a suspected jihadist attack, though officials acknowledged that the attacker's method — repeatedly demanding the plane divert to an unnamed location while the pilot calmly recited «flaps set, landing gear down, brace for impact» for the fourth hour — suggested a profound misunderstanding of how cockpits work. «We have never seen a hijacker so committed to hearing the same announcement,» said a senior security official. «By the twenty-second rehearsal, he was asking for water.»
The crew's discipline transformed the cabin. Flight attendants distributed landing cards, then collected them, then distributed them again, while passengers formed a queue to practice the brace position in shifts. A group of Israeli tourists began timing each drill with a stopwatch, and by the final repetition had established a cabin record of eleven seconds from alarm to seated composure. The pilot, who has not been named, reportedly told the tower that the repetition had made the procedure «muscle memory» and requested permission to continue after landing.
FlyDubai has announced that all future flights to Tel Aviv will include a mandatory forty-cycle emergency drill, and that the airline is considering replacing its in-flight safety video with a live demonstration performed by the crew at cruising altitude. The attacker, now in custody, has reportedly asked to be transferred to a facility where no one reads checklists aloud.