The flydubai incident: Every bit of it happened

Why are we so easily swayed by deception? The flydubai incident is a case in point where sensational fabrication becomes marketable. There is nothing that occurred outside the realm of probability to suspect some sort of gigantic conspiracy involving several disparate elements. The waters were muddied by false and fake video designed to produce shock and horror. And the meme menace.

Lean back a moment and think it out. What is anyone involved getting out of such a lie? Nothing at all. There just aren't any upsides to deliberately creating such a dire situation.

The idea that Israel planned this elaborate scheme to discredit Iran is absurd. That concept is trumped by an ongoing war since February 28.

The other scenario says there is a glass of water on a table that did not fall despite a deep dive of 14,000 feet. That water, if it is actually real, could be kept there after the crisis. If you have just escaped the jaws of death, you could get thirsty.

Much is also being made of oxygen masks not dropping down. For one, there was no loss of cabin pressure, so they did not deploy. Can happen. In September 2008, during a Ryanair flight from Dublin to London Stansted, a tail-strike during take-off led the crew to open a pressurisation valve, causing rapid cabin decompression. When the passenger oxygen system was manually deployed, nine oxygen masks failed to deploy.

An Air Asia Airbus A320 in 2018 suffered a pressurisation malfunction during climb, prompting an emergency descent. Although the crew manually deployed the passenger oxygen masks, several units either did not deploy or deployed without providing masks.

Now let's be sensible. flydubai issued official statements. A physical altercation in the cockpit. A diversion to Tabuk. Everyone safe. Airlines do not admit to mid-air fisticuffs for fun. If they wanted publicity, they'd offer a seat sale. Saudi Arabia backed it up in toto with its parallel enquiry.

The Kingdom's Ministry of Interior investigated and said the co-pilot assaulted the captain. When Riyadh and Dubai are saying the same thing, you sit up and pay attention. You don’t invent a story and get a sovereign government to sign off on it.PLANE'S RADAR TRAIL WAS PURE DRAMA

A plunge of roughly 14,125 feet in 29 seconds. That is not a normal flight path. That is a Bollywood climax. You can't fake that with a joystick and a prayer. The radar data is there for anyone with the patience to look. The black box will prove it.

If this was a gimmick, who would dare take a chance like that? Nobody.

You can’t fake a planeload of people. You can't fake an emergency landing. You can’t fake a mayday call and hijacking signals and then pretend it was a setup. That just does not happen.TOO MANY GOVTS, PLAYERS INVOLVED

For a deception to work, you'd need three sovereign governments and a commercial airline to lie in perfect harmony. And 174 passengers and crew. Have you ever tried to get three people to agree on lunch? Exactly.PASSENGERS REVEALED ALL

They were there. They saw. Their accounts match the core facts. No credible passenger has come forward to say the whole thing was staged. They said it as it unfolded.

The Israeli embassy in Australia publicly called the anti-Semitic "false flag" theories exactly what they are. Rubbish. When even an embassy has to issue a statement, you know the conspiracy is drowning in its own nonsense. Iran's press and TV offered no evidence. Analysts have found none.FAKE BBC REPORT SWIFTLY EXPOSED

That purported BBC report implicating the Mossad and India? Entirely fabricated. AI-generated audio. Fake captions. The only thing missing was a laugh track. The existence of a fake report doesn’t discredit the real one. It just proves liars are working overtime.VIRAL VIDEO WAS A DEEPFAKE

Old footage of a plane over a city, mixed with real video from inside the flight, and deepfake technology. Fact-checkers pulled it apart like a samosa at tea time. If your evidence is a deepfake, you don’t have evidence. You have a mockery. The fact that multiple false stories competed with each other doesn’t prove a cover-up. It proves that disinformation agents were scrambling to exploit the incident. And probably still are.

The wounded Commander, Captain Smit Machchhar, is in hospital with genuine wounds. That in itself is evidence that the flight went to hell and back. Time to honour the courage and offer thanks, not cook up total nonsense.- Ends(Views expressed in this opinion piece are those of the author)

Bikram Vohra is a veteran journalist and former editor of Gulf News, Khaleej Times and Bahrain Tribune. He ran the Middle East Aviation Journal for 15 years from the UAE and has written extensively on aviation and air safety. He is also the author of five books.