A fake BBC report generated by AI and based on a hijacked video falsely claims that Indian agents were responsible for the hijacking of the Flydubai flight.

Published on: 02/10/2026 - 11:13

On Wednesday September 30, Flydubai flight FZ1073, which connected Dubai to Tel Aviv, was the victim of an attempted hijacking: in mid-flight, the co-pilot stabbed the captain and tried to crash the plane. It was finally brought under control by the crew and passengers who managed to regain control of the aircraft and land it in Saudi Arabia.

If the investigation is still ongoing, the Emirati authorities have mentioned a possible “terrorist trail” while Israel has denounced an “attempted jihadist terrorist attack”. This Thursday, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu told the American channel Fox News that the co-pilot, accused of stabbing his colleague, had undergone “radical Islamist indoctrination”.

On In the video, a presenter announces that a passenger of Indian nationality, a certain “Raghav Menon”, would have been responsible for the attempted hijacking.

To display this X content (Twitter), it is necessary to authorize audience measurement and advertising cookies.

To further incriminate India, on X, Baba Thoka also adds that two men of Indian nationality allegedly held a secret meeting with the Mossad. These men allegedly recruited “Raghav Menon” who is said to be a former agent of the RAW (Research and Analysis Wing, India's foreign intelligence agency) for the attempted hijacking. “Raghav Menon” would have carried out this undercover mission in coordination with the pilot of flight FZ1073 Smit Machchhar, also of Indian nationality, claims the account.

A deepfake filled with false claims

However, this so-called report is fake. First, a test in the Mever deepfake detector integrated into AFP's Invid tool indicates that the video shared by Baba Thoka has a 99% probability of having been generated by artificial intelligence.

Then nothing is true in what is stated in the video. There is no mention of Raghav Meno on the BBC website. No Indian passenger is mentioned to have played a role in the hijacking for which responsibility is attributed to the co-pilot. According to Israeli media, the latter is of Omani nationality.

Far from having been complicit in the attempted hijacking, Smit Machchhar, the captain, indeed of Indian origin, was described as a "true hero" by Benjamin Netanyahu for the "extraordinary courage" he showed during the hijacking. Despite the severity of his injuries, the pilot resisted his attacker who had stabbed him, and managed to open the cockpit door to allow the passengers and crew to subdue the attacker, which made it possible to “save the lives of 174 people”, praised Benjamin Netanyahu.

A manipulated video that films the hijacking in the wrong place

Finally, it appears that the author of the video included in the false BBC report a diverted video which has no relation to the events.

At the 9th second of the sequence, a video supposedly taken by a passenger at the time of the hijacking and momentary loss of control of the aircraft is shown. Filmed from the window, the video shows the plane pitching while passengers are heard screaming.

The video appears to have been filmed above Dubai in the United Arab Emirates. In this video, we can see the building of a luxury hotel, the Hyatt Regency, recognizable in particular by a circular construction on its roof.

However, as indicated by the air traffic monitoring site Flightradar 24, the hijacking of flight FZ1073 did not take place above Dubai but above Saudi Arabia, inland, while the video in the false BBC report was filmed above an arm of the sea.

Finally, as open source investigator Tal Halgin was able to determine, the passengers' screams heard in the video actually come from audio from an old turbulence video from the year 2022.

Keywords associated with the article

The content you are trying to access does not exist or is no longer available.