TEL AVIV, Israel (AP) — A pilot on a flight from the United Arab Emirates stabbed another pilot and then apparently tried to crash the aircraft carrying dozens of Israelis on Wednesday, Israel's prime minister said. Passengers and crew subdued the attacker, and the plane made a safe emergency landing in Saudi Arabia.
The FlyDubai flight to Israel issued an emergency alert and abruptly descended thousands of feet (meters). The episode prompted Israel to scramble warplanes amid concerns about a possible hijacking.
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Video footage circulating on social media and reviewed by The Associated Press shows two men on the floor of the plane, bloodied and wounded. Two people appear to be providing 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 passengers and crew 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 from the 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 they were not authorized to brief the media.
Netanyahu has 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.
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 a minute, before making an erratic circle close to the Jordanian border and landing in Tabuk about an hour later, according to Flightradar24.
As the plane began to dive, a passenger and a crew member broke into the cockpit, said Netanyahu, citing a passenger he spoke to. Other crew members then took over flying the plane.
Among the passengers who intervened were members of the Israeli security forces and air marshals, according to a person familiar with a probe by Saudi Arabia and regional partners. The person was not authorized to comment publicly and spoke on condition of anonymity.
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.
FlyDubai confirmed that an “altercation occurred in the flight deck” and the aircraft was secured by on-duty crew "who diverted and landed the aircraft safely.”
Yasmin Abukasis said her daughter, who was on the plane, told her in a phone call that she could hear someone screaming “Help!”
Her daughter said the plane started to lose control, causing passengers to scream, but eventually two people were able to wrest control of the plane, while other people attempted to subdue an attacker.
Passengers told Israel’s Channel 12 by phone that they heard shouts from those sitting near the front of the plane who heard an altercation between the pilots.
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.
The Israel Airports Authority said a “rescue flight” had taken off from Saudi Arabia, headed for Israel.
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 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 Scarf from Jerusalem. Associated Press writers Sam Metz and Aamer Madhani in Jerusalem, Ami Ben Tov in Tel Aviv, Israel, and Adam Schreck in Bangkok contributed to this report.
