# Blood at 35,000 feet: possible hijacking attempt on flight to Israel

**URL:** <https://boards.straightdope.com/t/blood-at-35-000-feet-possible-hijacking-attempt-on-flight-to-israel/1033484>\
**Category:** Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share\
**Created:** [September 30, 2026, 11:25am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/blood-at-35-000-feet-possible-hijacking-attempt-on-flight-to-israel/1033484 "2026-09-30T11:25:39Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 1\
**Showing post:** 7

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**Author:** ![Babale](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/babale/32/15666_2.png) [@Babale](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Babale)\
**Post date:** [September 30, 2026, 1:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/blood-at-35-000-feet-possible-hijacking-attempt-on-flight-to-israel/1033484/7 "2026-09-30T13:32:23Z")

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To quote some relevant commentary from LSLGuy in the other thread:

> [@The Great Ongoing Aviation Thread (general and other) (Part 2)](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-great-ongoing-aviation-thread-general-and-other-part-2/1030892/478):
>
> Losing 17,400 feet in 2 minutes is a lot faster than even a maximum performance emergency descent in that aircraft type: 737-MAX 8. Even if we make allowances for the worst case granularity of the data, that’s still a lot. Which also suggests they significantly exceeded the airplane’s operating envelope. Good thing it didn’t start shedding parts. Or if it did, they were not major ones.
> 
> And yeah, depending on how much more info comes out soon, this might be a good candidate for its own thread.

> [@The Great Ongoing Aviation Thread (general and other) (Part 2)](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-great-ongoing-aviation-thread-general-and-other-part-2/1030892/479):
>
> > [@The Great Ongoing Aviation Thread (general and other) (Part 2)](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-great-ongoing-aviation-thread-general-and-other-part-2/1030892/478):
> >
> > Good thing it didn’t start shedding parts. Or if it did, they were not major ones.
> 
> [Reddit](https://www.reddit.com/media?url=https%3A%2F%2Fpreview.redd.it%2Fisrael-bound-flight-lands-in-saudi-arabia-after-fight-v0-iydfxrjlumsh1.jpeg%3Fwidth%3D720%26format%3Dpjpg%26auto%3Dwebp%26s%3D1a5567ed26cbb51eaaa1498863100f06c4bb95ab)
> 
> The photo isn’t embedding properly due to how Reddit handles things but… click the link to see a very damaged tail and rudder.

> [@The Great Ongoing Aviation Thread (general and other) (Part 2)](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-great-ongoing-aviation-thread-general-and-other-part-2/1030892/480):
>
> Yikes. That’s about 90% of the one and only rudder missing. Which suggests some part of the attempted crash was a rudder dance. Or maybe the rudder is the first thing to flutter once you’re past Mach 1. 😬 😲
> 
> I’m pleased to see no _obvious_ deformation of the horizontal tails. Which suggests that despite a massive overspeed, whoever managed the dive recovery did a good job keeping the Gs within reason.
> 
> Once they get done reviewing the FDR, I wonder whether they’ll find over-Gs significant enough to render the jet not economically inspectable / repairable? We’ll see. And probably fairly soon.

Even scarier. So even though they stopped the terrorist pilot the plane was very close to unflyable? What a tragedy that would be - stopping the hijacker only to find the plane too badly damaged to land… Very glad this didn’t happen.

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