The incident was in the "Cockpit".. The secret behind the damage to the tail of the "Fly Dubai" plane

Circulating pictures of the Flydubai plane, which was heading towards Tel Aviv before changing course and making an emergency landing at Tabuk Airport, showed that part of its tail was damaged, raising questions about the causes, even though the incident the plane witnessed began inside the cockpit.

As pictures of the damage circulated, analyzes suggested that this part of the plane was damaged as a result of the violent and sudden drop in altitude, and the accompanying significant increase in the plane’s speed during the chaos that preceded its emergency landing.

The plane suddenly lost altitude, when it fell from approximately 34,000 feet at 5:21 GMT to less than 17,000 feet at 5:22, according to data from the “Flight Radar” website, which tracks air traffic.

While air safety expert Captain Yousef Al-Hamlan Al-Daja explained, “Airplanes have maximum speed limits, and exceeding these limits exposes the wings and body of the plane to severe stress.” He said in statements to Al-Arabiya/Al-Hadath that it was likely that the Flydubai plane had exceeded this speed, which led to damage to the part known as the “rudder,” and not the entire tail of the plane.

The "rad" is the moving surface mounted on the trailing edge of the vertical stabilizer (fin) in the tail of the aircraft, and its primary function is to control lateral movement, i.e. the deflection of the nose of the aircraft to the right or left.

In addition, Al-Daja pointed out that the apparent damage to the plane indicates that it exceeded the design speed limits, which led to the crash of Al-Radar. He added, "If the tail of the plane had been completely destroyed, the plane would not have survived at all."

While he linked this to the sharp decline of the plane, saying, “The plane fell from an altitude of 35,000 feet to 18,000 feet in about two minutes, even though the plane was designed not to exceed the maximum speed limits specified for it.”

Al-Daajah also pointed out that planes issue audio warnings when exceeding specified speeds, and among these warnings are sounds such as “Speed” or an alarm bell, and that passengers were hearing these warnings, which indicates that the plane was in a very sharp descent, and the bank angle may have reached about 90 degrees, according to his estimate. However, he stressed that damage to the "rad" does not necessarily mean losing the ability to land.

In conjunction with what happened in the cockpit, passengers said that they were surprised by the plane's rapid descent and loss of thousands of feet of altitude within a short period, as passenger Miriam Shira Ohion explained to Agence France-Presse that the plane was "almost out of control" when the stabbing incident occurred.

Passenger Almog Itali also narrated that the passengers felt as if they were facing "very strong turbulence", even though there were no turbulence, describing the feeling resulting from losing thousands of feet of altitude within seconds as being like riding the "Death Train" game.

While Israel considered the Flydubai plane incident, which was heading from Dubai to Tel Aviv, a “terrorist attempt,” the airline stressed that “it is too early to determine the causes or motives of the incident.”

It is noteworthy that Tabuk Airport received a distress call from a Flydubai flight at 8:44 am, with the aim of carrying out an emergency landing, which required activating emergency and preparedness procedures to deal with the situation and ensure the safety of passengers and crew members. It was later confirmed that an alternative plane carried the passengers to their final destination.