Claim: A BBC News broadcast on the hijacking of a Flydubai flight from Dubai to Tel Aviv claims that a secret meeting was held between Mossad and Indian officials Parag Jain and Ajit Doval. The video has been shared with claims that the hijacking was coordinated by former intelligence RAW agent Raghav Menon and Indian pilot Smit Machchhar.
Fact: The BBC News video has been digitally altered.
On 30 September 2026, X user Baba Thoka posted a clip of Sally Bundock, a chief news presenter for the BBC. The video shows Thoka saying, “Flydubai flight FZ1073 from Dubai to Tel Aviv survived an attempted hijacking. Reportedly, passenger Raghav Menon, described as an Indian national, attempted to hijack the Dubai-Tel Aviv bound flight.”
The broadcast was posted with the following caption:
“🚨 BREAKING: According to the latest updates of flight FZ10703, Parag Jain and Ajit Doval from India held secret meeting with Mossad and selected former intelligence RAW agent Raghav Menon for a covert mission in coordination with Indian Pilot Smit Machchhar for Dubai–Tel Aviv flight hijacking. The plan was to shift blame onto Iran or Arab states. But when it failed, Israeli security media reduced the incident to a mere altercation between the two pilots.”
Screenshot from the Viral X post.
Attempted highjacking of Flydubai plane
On 30 September 2026, Flydubai Flight 1073, an outbound flight from Dubai to Tel Aviv, was reported to have been hijacked, by the co-pilot, an Omani national. The flight took off at 03:05 GMT from Dubai International Airport with more than 170 passengers.
According to Flightradar24, two and a half hours into the flight, a rapid descent of 17,000 feet was reported in Saudi Arabian airspace.The unexpected drop was followed by the plane transmitting a code 7700 for “general emergency”, followed by a 7500 code for “unlawful interference” at 5:38 am. A statement issued shortly by Flydubai confirmed that Flight 1073 had been diverted and landed safely in Tabuk Airport.
On 1 October 2026, Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu confirmed the details of the events, and the UAE’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs stated “there had been an altercation in the flight deck, prompting Flydubai crew members travelling on board to intervene and secure the aircraft.” This altercation was confirmed to be the stabbing of the flight commander Captain Smit Machchhar, as he stopped the attempted crashing of the plane, and raised the alarm, which prompted off-duty crew members and passengers to overpower the co-pilot and pull the aircraft out of its rapid descent.
The Ministry of Foreign Affairs have launched an investigation under the UAE’s judicial authorities, as Flydubai is registered under the UAE and any crimes committed on board “even when they occur outside UAE territory” are to be investigated by UAE.
Fact or Fiction?
Soch Fact Check reverse-image searched the keyframe of Sally Bundock and found the coverage to be from a broadcast on 29 September 2026 titled: “OpenAI scraps rollout of new ChatGPT model over safety concerns.” No other broadcast featuring Bundock was found covering the hijacking from 30 September 2026.
A comparison of keyframes from both videos can be seen below; both frames are identical, proving that the footage has been recycled.
Left: Screenshot from BBC News Official Youtube Channel. Right: Screenshot from X post.
Audio Analysis
Soch Fact Check spoke to Shaur Azher, a lecturer who teaches sound design and sound recording at the University of Karachi and the Shaheed Zulfikar Ali Bhutto Institute of Science and Technology (SZABIST). He also works as an audio engineer at our sister organisation, Soch Videos, and specialises in mixing and mastering audio.
Azher compared the viral video (Sample A) to the BBC News footage (Sample B) from 29 September, and based on this comparison the audio of the viral was found to have been digitally manipulated. An analysis of the two clips found :
1.In Sample A, the broadcast repeats twice. It starts at 00:00:00.140 with the broadcaster saying “1073” and audio repeats again at 00:00:15.892 with the same recording of the passengers screaming.
2.Sample A has a very high noise floor at -22db and Sample B’s noise floor is -45db. BBC broadcasts are typically clean.
3. Sample A exhibits LUFS of -14.7 LUFS as per the EBU R128 Broadcast standard.
4.In Sample A, 59 mouth clicks were recorded, whereas in Sample B, mouth clicks were recorded at 147 mouth clicks within the same duration. A higher number of mouth clicks can be found in natural audio.
5.Mouth crackles were observed at both samples.
6. Sample B changes more from frame to frame. Its MFCC delta variance is 19.4 against 10.9 for Sample A. Sample A is smoother and more uniform. The same texture
repeats in both halves of the clip, which matches the observation that the broadcaster loops.
Conclusion: Sample A fails several tests that a real recording passes. Its stereo channels don’t agree with each other, its room tone is loud, steeply tilted, and unstable, and its MFCC movement is flatter. Meanwhile, Sample B is indicative of a natural recording.
Based on these calculations, the image below displays visual audio representations comparing two different audio files using two standard techniques in speech/audio processing.
Spectrogram of Sample A and Sample B.
Based on the analysis of the video’s audio, we can conclude that it has been digitally manipulated.
Virality
The video was found on Facebook and X.
On X, the video received around 123.4K Views.
Conclusion: The BBC News footage on the Dubai to Israel Flydubai flight hijacking has been digitally manipulated. The original video from a 29 September 2026 broadcast unrelated to the hijacking.
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