Newscast

The broadcast first examined the flydubai flight from Dubai to Tel Aviv, using BBC Verify reporting to describe how the aircraft issued a 7700 emergency code and then a 7500 code indicating unlawful interference, after descending from about 34,000 feet to roughly 16,600 feet in around 100 seconds. It crossed into Jordanian airspace, looped back and later landed at Tabuk in Saudi Arabia after its transponder was switched off. Passengers' images and videos emerged, including footage of blood-stained people and a man in pilot uniform restrained near the cockpit. Jane Corbin said four passengers entered the cockpit and subdued the co-pilot, an Omani national believed to be the attacker, while the chief pilot, an Indian national, had been stabbed in the head.

Benjamin Netanyahu greeted the returned Israelis and said it was too early to say whether the co-pilot had been radicalised or had connections with Iran. The incident came ahead of Israeli elections, after Netanyahu had warned of a security threat and opponents had accused him of cynical manipulation; he was described as just behind Gadi Eisenkot in the polls. The programme also discussed UAE-Israel relations under the Abraham Accords, questions about the Omani pilot flying the route, and the expectation that cockpit data would help establish the motive.

It then turned to the Bank of England governor Andrew Bailey, who spoke to Faisal Islam about risks from AI to the economy and financial system. These included cyber-attacks, deepfake scams, AI agents switching savings and making deposits less sticky, and automated trading by hedge funds and banks. Bailey also pointed to the scale of AI-related investment, including planned stock market flotations for frontier model companies and massive spending on AI data centres, and to the risk of a bubble. The discussion covered the need to maintain human intervention in AI systems and for financial institutions to know who they are trading with and how much.