Half of Airline Pilots Who Crashed Planes Were Muslim

A troubling pattern that raises serious questions.

Passenger airline crashes are unusual, intentional ones are rare and intentional pilot crashes are virtually unheard of. Passenger planes are generally flown by highly trained airline pilots, many of them are veterans of their respective air forces, and they remain calm in a crisis.

That’s why there hasn’t been a single case of an American airline pilot deliberately crashing a plane and only one case of an airline pilot taking down a western plane with all onboard and that took place in 2015 when a suicidal first officer crashed Lufthansa’s Germanwings Flight 9525.

The only other case involving a western pilot, but not a western airline, was the crash of Mozambique Airlines Flight TM470 in Africa by a Portuguese pilot. Every other case has involved non-western pilots with two Asian pilots and four Muslim pilots deliberately crashing or trying to crash planes: including the first known deliberate crash of a passenger plane by an airline pilot that took place in 1994 when Captain Younes Khayati deliberately disabled the autopilot on Royal Air Maroc Flight 630 and crashed the plane into a mountain.

The list of Muslim suicide pilots also includes EgyptAir Flight 990 in 1999 where the first officer kept shouting “Allahu Akbar” while downing the plane as well as Malaysia Airlines Flight MH370, the subject of endless fantastic conspiracy theories ranging from UFOs to black holes, but that was actually likely the work of Captain Zaharie Ahmad Shah.

After the FlyDubai incident in which an Omani Muslim pilot stabbed an Indian pilot in a reported attempt to hijack Flight FZ1073 bound for Israel and possibly crash the plane, the list of Muslim pilots who tried to bring down airplanes is up to 4.

And that means that 44% of pilots who deliberately crashed tried to crash planes were Muslim.

These statistics are all the more startling since Muslim pilots and airlines make up a very limited percentage of the airline travel sector. The Asian and North American market together account for 66% of flights, Europe adds another 23%, Africa comes in at only around 3% and the Middle East only accounts for 5%. Despite that, the Middle East and Africa account for a disproportionate number of deliberate pilot crashes when they represent a tiny minority of flights.

The troubling statistic that nearly half of pilots attempting to crash their own planes were Muslim does not take into account Muslim hijackings, including the Islamic terror attacks of September 11, or any other hijacking attempts, but is limited only to pilots crashing passenger airline planes.

If we were to count hijackings, 9/11 alone would ensure a much worse track record for Muslims flying planes since these were by far the deadliest cases of pilots, however illegal and illegitimate, weaponizing jet airplanes to cause as much damage and loss of life as possible.

The latest incident raises serious questions about the risk entailed by both Muslim pilots and Muslim airlines operating in the United States of America and other known terror targets.

The EgyptAir Flight 990 crash off Nantucket led to claims of Islamophobia when investigators flagged the shouts about Allah on the cockpit recording as concerning even though the crash predated 9/11. The Egyptians initially refused to cede control of the investigation and experts were dispatched to explain Muslim theology to Americans. We were firmly told that when First Officer Gameel Al-Batouti took the opportunity to seize control of the plane while the captain was in the bathroom and sent the plane diving while shouting about “Allah”, this was normal.

It turned out that Al-Batouti had deliberately crashed the plane. The Egyptians refused to admit it and it took extensive work and an attempt by another Egyptian pilot to defector before we got anywhere close to the truth. Even then there were suspicions that it had been a terrorist act that were never proven, confirmed or even discussed because of the political sensitivity of the crash.

A similar cover-up would likely have ensued had the FlyDubai takeover ended in a crash. But instead the Israeli passengers stormed the cockpit, disabled the attacking pilot and allowed the relief pilots to take control of the aircraft. But it is unlikely that the authorities on the ground, currently the Saudis, will allow the truth about what really happened in the air to come out.

It’s unknown how many of the deliberate Muslim airline crashes were due to pilot terrorism because the Muslim countries involved tended to avoid any discussion of the motives involved.

Some of these crashes by Muslim pilots have been attributed to personal issues, ranging from workplace frustration to a failed love affair, while others, notably EgyptAir Flight 990, were falsely attributed to mechanical failure, but western investigators have rarely had direct access to family members, friends and local officials making it very difficult for them to learn anything.

There have been red flags in some of those crashes that raise the possibility of terrorism.

Is it really a coincidence that intentional pilot crashes began in 1994, two years after the first Al Qaeda attack and a year after the World Trade Center bombing, and further crashes have roughly paralleled an upsurge in Islamic terrorist activity?

The passengers on the Royal Air Maroc Flight 630, apart from a Kuwaiti prince, were mostly Europeans while the passengers on the EgyptAir Flight 990 were a mix of Americans and Egyptians, but notably included 33 Egyptian military officers who would have been seen as targets by the Muslim Brotherhood and its various splinter groups including Al Qaeda.

A plane full of Israelis flying to Israel would be viewed as a golden ticket to Islamic ‘paradise’ for any devout Muslim. Especially when that plane could have also crashed into an Israeli building or facility on the way down. The death toll from such an attack could have been extremely severe and also tempting enough to explain what happened on Flight FZ1073.

The troubling statistic that nearly half of deliberate pilot crashes were carried out by Muslim pilots should make us think about where we fly, who we fly with and whom we allow to fly into America.