Old Video Falsely Shared as One Showing the Allegedly Hijacked Flydubai Flight

We found that the video is from 2025 and shows Israeli basketball player Yam Madar.

A video is going viral on social media, claiming to show the Israeli passengers aboard Flydubai Flight FZ1073 celebrating after helping subdue an attacker following the violent cockpit incident.

• The video went viral after a recent incident in which a flight from Dubai to Tel Aviv was forced to divert to Tabuk following an altercation between the two pilots.

• The official social media accounts of DT Next, an Indian news organisation, also shared the video with a similar claim.

(Archived versions of similar claims can be found here, here, here, and here.)

Is it true?: No, the video is old and shows Israeli basketball player Yam Madar celebrating on a flight.

How did we find out?: We ran a reverse image search on the video using Google Lens and found a video carrying similar visuals, shared on TikTok in 2025.

• The video was uploaded by Sport 5, a major Israeli television network, on 18 August 2025.

• It is captioned, "Don't take a sleeping pill: This is what it's like to be with Yam Madar on the plane". (translated from Hebrew to English)

• While running a keyword search, we found the same video uploaded by the official Facebook account of Sport 5 as well.

• Upon a Google search, we found out that Yam Madar is an Israeli basketball player.

Conclusion: The video is old and shows Israeli basketball player Yam Madar celebrating on a flight.

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