Fox News Apologizes for Mistakenly Airing 9/11 Footage While Covering Flydubai Cockpit Fight

Brian Kilmeade at Fox News was forced to give an on-air apology on Wednesday, September 30 — after the network randomly aired footage from 9/11 during its live coverage of the developing situation on an Israel-bound flight.

Per Israeli officials, via Reuters, a Boeing 737 Max 8 was flying from Dubai to Tel Aviv when the copilot tried to crash the plane after stabbing the pilot. The copilot, however, was subdued by passengers and crew members before the plane landed safely in Saudi Arabia. At one point, the plane plummeted 14,000 feet in less than 30 seconds.

Reporting on the incident Wednesday morning on Fox & Friends, cohost Lawrence Jones asked foreign correspondent Jeff Paul about an earlier statement from an Israeli official to the Jerusalem Post claiming that the incident was “an attempt to hijack the plane and crash it into the ground.”

While Paul told the hosts that “we don’t know the intentions of this incident,” footage from the field where United Flight 93 crashed on 9/11 was shown briefly on screen. “SHANKSVILLE, PA Sept. 11, 2001,” a chyron over the footage read.

Flight 93, of course, crashed in Pennsylvania after passengers and crew members fought back against terrorists attempting to fly the plane into a government building.

Though neither Paul nor the show’s hosts noticed the footage, Kilmeade offered up an on-screen apology about 30 minutes later.

“A half hour ago when we came on the air, we were just getting the latest on this story, we aired some footage unrelated,” he said. “We apologize for any confusion. We’re still also trying to make sense of what just took place. So you got this flight in the air leaving the UAE, heading to Israel, that was forced to go down in Saudi Arabia.”

While the intent behind Wednesday’s incident is still unclear, Flydubai warned against “premature speculation.”

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said, according to Reuters, that those who pushed back against the co-pilot “saved many lives” and likely “prevented a heavy disaster.” Citing a passenger, he said the man was seen “trying to sabotage the plane’s systems” before he was subdued. He has been arrested, with Netanyahu adding that “all passengers are out of harm’s way.”

The passengers, meanwhile, have since boarded another Flydubai aircraft and departed Saudi Arabia for Israel.