Trump Hails 737 Max After FlyDubai Emergency—A Plane He Once Called ‘Worst Looking’

Topline

President Donald Trump hailed planemaker Boeing and its 737 Max aircraft in a Truth Social post early on Thursday, saying the plane’s structural design helped it withstand the FlyDubai flight emergency where the pilot was stabbed by his copilot during an altercation, causing the plane to plunge nearly 15,000 feet in under a minute.

Key Facts

In his post, the president congratulated “the GREAT Boeing Company” for the 737 Max’s ability to “withstand G Forces and Strain far beyond what it was designed and expected to do.”

Trump added that Wednesday’s incident was an “amazing show of precise and powerful structural planning and design.”

The president, who previously derided the 737 Max’s design, said on Thursday that Boeing builds “the finest commercial airliners in the sky” and it was “about time” they get proper credit for this plane’s “incredible ‘genius!’”

The flight from Dubai to Tel Aviv had to be diverted to Saudi Arabia on Wednesday after a violent clash broke out in the cockpit, where the pilot was stabbed by the co-pilot before passengers intervened to stop the attack.

Speaking to reporters in the Oval Office earlier on Wednesday, Trump said it seemed that the co-pilot was “perhaps a terrorist or perhaps a whackjob.”

Trump then praised the pilot, calling him a “hero” for opening the cockpit door and calling for help despite being in very bad shape.

What Has Trump’s Previously Said About The 737 Max?

Although he praised Boeing and the 737 Max’s design on Thursday, the president has been highly critical of the narrow-body passenger jet in the past. In January 2024, he said Boeing should bring back its out-of-production 757 plane and “Stop with the crazy extensions of the 737, the worst looking plane in the air. All you get is the 737Max – And how did that work out? It seems cursed!” In a 2023 post, he mocked the plane’s maker, calling the company “‘bad maintenance’ Boeing” and wrote that it should not “lengthen the unattractive, fat, and slow 737 to get a larger plane.” Trump then added: “Had they listened to me, years ago, they wouldn’t have had the disaster known as the 737 MAX. Those two horrible tragedies would never have happened.” The tragedies Trump was referencing were the crashes of Lion Air Flight 610 and Ethiopian Airlines Flight 302, in 2018 and 2019 respectively, which led to the 737 Max being grounded worldwide.

Key Background

Around 174 passengers were on the aircraft where the incident occurred. Preliminary data collected by FlightRadar24 showed that the plane plunged from 30,875 feet to 16,750 feet in just 29 seconds as the altercation occurred inside the cockpit. The incident triggered fears of a possible hijack, but the plane managed to make an emergency landing in Tabuk in northwestern Saudi Arabia. In an interview with CNN on Wednesday, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said the pilot who fought back managed to prevent a “9/11 disaster.” The pilot has been identified as Smit Machchhar from India, and Netanyahu praised him for his “extraordinary bravery” in an X post and wrote: “Despite being stabbed and seriously injured, he fought back, resisted, opened the cockpit door, and enabled passengers and crew to overpower the attacker — preventing a catastrophic mid-air disaster.” The co-pilot’s identity has not yet been made public.

further reading

Flydubai Pilot Stabbed, Flight Diverted To Saudi Arabia—Here’s What We Know (Forbes)