Think About it -- FZ1073 and Applications to Church Security 1

Resources Think About it -- FZ1073 and Applications to Church Security 1
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Carl Chinn

Carl Chinn

Oct 10, 2026

On Wednesday, 9/30/26, a terrorist tried to take over flydubai flight FZ1073, enroute from Dubai, U.A.E. to Jerusalem, Israel.

In the opening moments of the attack, that terrorist (the co-pilot assigned to the flight) neutralized the pilot, damaged the cockpit and caused the plane to drop from 34,000 feet to 17,000 in 90 seconds. Within those 90 seconds however, that terrorist was defeated by common citizens aboard the flight who became instant defenders.

The only person in this story that doesn't deserve to have their real name honored is the attacker. Since he was a failure, we will just call him, "Fashil" (Arabic for “loser”).

Much of this story correlates to church security. In fact, there are too many correlations to capture in just one writing. This is the first of an undetermined number of weekly "Think About it" articles inspired by this remarkable story.

Stay with me here, as I connect this story to church security.

174 people, most of whom didn't even know each other, were instantly thrown into a fight for life together.
It was an occupied space where everything was supposed to be safe.
Those 174 people were in that space due in part to their trust of the organizational leaders (both those piloting the plane and those of the flydubai organization).
It happened so fast, that if cowardice had prevailed (or even caused hesitancy), everyone would have died.
As a bonus similarity, I want to point out something almost humorous. The first common citizen (Yaniv Hayun) to neutralize Fashil, was a plumber. Sounds familiar.

The late Billy Graham said, "courage is contagious." Our friend, Stephen Willeford (another plumber) adds, "…and so is cowardice." Thankfully, cowardice isn't part of this story for any except Fashil. Because courage was contagious, evil was defeated.

At first, the defenders had no idea who was the bad guy and who was the good guy. They could only see a bloody man in a flight officer uniform on the floor, another man in uniform at the controls, lots of damage and lots of blood.

Yaniv Hayun quickly determined Fashil was the bad guy and the man on the floor (Captain Smit Machchhar) was the good guy. Hayun overcame the man at the controls and others began medically assisting Captain Machchhar.

Think About it

Consider the chaos, uncertainty and rapidity of this situation.

Continues next week.

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