Flight FZ1073, chapter by chapter: The Telegraph's hijack reconstruction draws a crowd
A four-minute account of the attempted hijacking passed 320,000 views in seven hours, far ahead of the channel's two other videos on the same flight.
The TelegraphStory of Why this story? The video opened at a pace of 720,027 views a day, 51 times a normal first day on this channel (14,072).
How the attempted hijacking of an Israeli flight unfolded
What happened aboard Flydubai Flight FZ1073 between Dubai and Tel Aviv? The Telegraph answers with a four-minute reconstruction. Seven hours after it went up, it had more than 320,000 views, on a channel where a new video usually gathers around 14,000 in its whole first day.
The video moves through the flight in chapters: the route, the 15,000-foot drop that its description says took 37 seconds, footage from inside the cabin, the hijack alert, Benjamin Netanyahu's statement, an aviation expert on cockpit security, and the emergency landing at Tabuk airport in Saudi Arabia. One segment carries a warning for distressing footage of injured crew.
The description sets out the core of it. Captain Smit Machchhar, an Indian citizen, was stabbed and lost control of the Boeing 737 Max. Before he lost consciousness, he got the cockpit door open, and passengers went in and subdued the attacker.
The captain is the person the comments name most often, and many write that they hope he pulls through. Others argue over wording, pointing out that the door was opened from inside rather than forced, which is how the description itself puts it. Some call for cockpit recordings to be made mandatory, and a number object to the background music on so serious a story.
The Telegraph posted two more videos about the flight the same day. One shows passengers clapping after the landing, and the other features travel journalist Simon Calder on insider threats. Neither came close to the reconstruction, which on its own has pushed the channel's daily views to nearly double their usual level.
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- Channel
- The Telegraph
- Subscribers
- 6,200,000
- Channel views, pace per day
- 1,157,128 (on a normal day: 651,219)
- Video published
- September 30, 2026
- Video views so far
- 327,098 (less than a day online)
- Video views, pace per day
- 720,027
The numbers
The figures show one video lifting a large news channel well above its usual daily pace within hours.
