TEL AVIV, Israel (AP) — A pilot on a flight from the United Arab Emirates to Israel stabbed another pilot Wednesday and then apparently tried to crash the jetliner carrying around 170 people, Israel's prime minister said. Passengers and crew subdued the attacker, and the plane landed safely in Saudi Arabia.
While some passengers screamed, the FlyDubai flight issued an emergency alert and abruptly descended thousands of feet. Israel scrambled warplanes amid concerns about a possible hijacking.
As a plane carrying passengers from the flight landed Wednesday evening in Israel, to cheers at the airport, it was not clear what motivated the attack.
“We’re going to die,” passenger Naama Bershadski recalled of the ordeal. She said she closed her eyes and prayed for a good ending.
Video footage circulating on social media and reviewed by The Associated Press showed two men on the plane's floor, bloodied and wounded. Two people appeared to be providing medical treatment, while two others guarded the cockpit.
“We are guarding the pilot,” one person said in Hebrew. In another video, passengers wept and cried out as the aircraft shook.
Those who intervened “saved many lives and prevented a major disaster,” Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said, adding that Saudi Arabia arrested a pilot whose identity was not immediately shared by authorities. Saudi Arabia had no immediate comment.
The plane’s captain and first officer were injured, according to a statement by Prince Sultan bin Abdulaziz International Airport in Tabuk, carried by state-run Alekhbariya television. Passengers received medical attention from local authorities, according to a regional official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because the official was not authorized to brief the media.
Netanyahu warned in recent days of unspecified, heightened security threats. The country is a week away from the anniversary of the Hamas-led Oct. 7, 2023, attack on Israel, which has triggered a series of wars, and is weeks away from an election.
A spokesperson for Netanyahu’s office said around 160 people on the plane were from Israel.
Video footage circulating on social media and reviewed by The Associated Press shows two men on the floor of the plane, with bloody wounds. Two people appear to be providing emergency medical treatment, while two others guard the cockpit. “We are guarding the pilot,” one person says in Hebrew. In another video, passengers weep and cry out in distress as the aircraft shakes.
The plane’s captain and the first officer were injured and taken to the hospital, according to a statement from the Prince Sultan bin Abdulaziz International Airport in Tabuk carried by the Saudi state-run Alekhbariya television. Passengers were receiving medical attention from local authorities, according to a regional official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to brief the media.
Netanyahu has warned in recent days of unspecified, heightened security threats. The country is days away from marking the anniversary of Hamas militants’ Oct. 7, 2023, attack on Israel, which has triggered a series of wars, and weeks away from an election.
Two pilots fought and passengers and crew interceded
Around two and a half hours after leaving Dubai, the flight descended from 33,000 feet to 17,000 feet (around 10,000 meters to 5,100 meters) in about the space of a minute, before making an erratic circle close to the Jordanian border and eventually landing in Tabuk about an hour later, according to Flightradar24.
As the plane began to dive, a passenger and a crew member managed to break into the cockpit, said Netanyahu, citing the passenger who he had spoken to. Other crew members then took over flying the plane.
“I salute these heroes who showed exceptional resourcefulness and courage. They saved many lives and prevented a major disaster,” said Netanyahu.
Earlier, an official confirmed that Israel had scrambled warplanes, fearing a hijacking. The official spoke on condition of anonymity because the incident was under investigation.
Netanyahu has warned in recent days of unspecified, escalated security threats. The country is days away from marking the anniversary of the Oct. 7, 2023, attack on southern Israel, weeks away from an election, and has been embroiled in multiple conflicts in the last three years.
Passengers screamed when they heard a fight
Yasmin Abukasis, whose daughter was on the flight, said her daughter told her in a phone call that she could hear someone screaming “help!”
Abukasis added that her daughter said the plane started to lose control, causing passengers to scream in fear. She said eventually two people — who she said were pilots — were able to wrest control of the plane, while other people attempted to subdue an attacker on the floor of the plane.
Passengers told Israel’s Channel 12 by phone that they also heard shouts from those sitting closer to the front of the plane who heard an altercation between the pilots, and the plane dipped steeply before landing in Saudi Arabia.
The airport in Tabuk reported that a FlyDubai flight made a distress call at 8:44 a.m. local time, before landing safely at 9:45 a.m. local time.
FlyDubai confirmed that flight FZ 1073 en route to Ben Gurion Airport experienced an incident and landed in Tabuk on Wednesday.
“Our teams are working closely with the relevant authorities,” the carrier said.
Israelis were targeted in a string of hijackings and airplane attacks by Palestinian militants in the 1960s and 1970s. Israel has not experienced a hijacking in decades but maintains some of the strictest airport security in the world, including on Israel-bound flights.
The emergency landing in Saudi Arabia was not the first for a plane carrying Israelis home. The kingdom does not have formal diplomatic ties with Israel, but ended its longstanding ban on Israeli flights overflying its territory in 2022. Since then, Saudi Arabia has coordinated multiple emergency landings for Israeli passengers, including in 2023 when a plane experienced an electrical malfunction.
The UAE has become a popular vacation destination for Israeli tourists since the countries normalized ties in 2020. FlyDubai is the lower-cost sister carrier of Emirates airlines.
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Magdy reported from Cairo and Metz from Jerusalem. Associated Press writers Adam Schreck in Bangkok and Ami Ben Tov in Tel Aviv, Israel, contributed to this report.