Tom Hartley reconstructs the flydubai flight to Tel Aviv for 7.30, far past the channel's usual start
The report on the Dubai to Tel Aviv flight that dropped sharply after a cockpit attack drew more viewers in seventeen hours than the rest of 7.30's same-night stories combined, many times over.
ABC News In-depthStory of Why this story? The video opened at a pace of 262,317 views a day, 14 times a normal first day on this channel (18,293).
How the terrifying flydubai flight from Dubai to Tel Aviv unfolded | 7.30
A new video on ABC News In-depth usually finds around 18,000 viewers in its first day. Tom Hartley's 7.30 report on the flydubai flight from Dubai to Tel Aviv passed 220,000 in seventeen hours, on course for roughly fourteen times that usual start.
The report sets out, step by step, how a routine flight became an emergency. According to the description, the captain was attacked in the cockpit, and the jet lost half its altitude within minutes. People on board overpowered the attacker and took control of the aircraft, and it landed safely in Saudi Arabia. Investigations are underway. The video opens with a warning that it contains distressing images.
It is the kind of piece the channel describes as its purpose, long-form journalism that breaks a story down one step at a time. Here the method is a reconstruction of the flight itself, from takeoff to landing.
The same edition of 7.30, presented by Sarah Ferguson, had other stories that went up beside it. They included a royal commission into Victoria's Big Build, the Newcastle Knights preparing for a grand final against the Sydney Roosters, and Magda Szubanski talking about her memoir. Each of those has a few thousand views so far. The flight report has far more than all of them together. The channel's previous standout, a Canadian sailor rescued by the Australian Navy in the Indian Ocean, needed two days to reach about half the flight report's total.
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- Channel
- ABC News In-depth
- Subscribers
- 2,450,000
- Channel views, pace per day
- 860,549 (on a normal day: 975,373)
- Video published
- October 1, 2026
- Video views so far
- 223,948 (less than a day online)
- Video views, pace per day
- 262,317
The numbers
For a channel whose new videos usually open in the tens of thousands, this one started in a different range.
