A FlyDubai flight from Dubai to Israel was forced to make an emergency landing in Saudi Arabia on Wednesday after an apparent altercation in the cockpit, sparking concerns about a possible hijacking and prompting Israel to take off fighter jets.
Israeli media, citing security officials, said the incident resulted from a fight between the commercial plane’s two pilots and that everyone on board was safe after landing in Tabuk, where there is a civilian airport adjacent to a Saudi military base.
The Jerusalem Post reported that a pilot attempted to hijack the plane but was overpowered by other crew members and passengers, citing an unnamed Israeli official who told the newspaper that a “major disaster was narrowly averted.”
A passenger told Israel Hayom that a pilot was stabbed during the fight and that Israeli passengers intervened to stop the fighting.
“There are people here with shirts covered in blood,” she said, calling the incident “very stressful.” Videos shared on social media corroborated his account, showing two men on the ground with blood smeared on and around them.
A passenger speaking to the Jerusalem Post said one pilot stabbed the other and tried to force him out of the cockpit as the plane began to fall apart. The passenger told the newspaper that a group of Israeli passengers near the front of the plane rushed to fight the attacker as the plane lost altitude.
The witness said the intervening passengers shouted at two off-duty pilots at the rear of the plane to “run and take control of it,” and one of them did so after the passengers managed to get the attacker out of the cockpit.
Israeli sources told the Post that the would-be hijacker was an Omani national. There was no immediate confirmation of details from Israeli or Saudi officials.
The crew of FlyDubai Flight 1073, a Boeing 737 Max 8, transmitted an emergency alert shortly after takeoff on Wednesday, according to publicly available flight tracking information.
GIUSEPPE CACACE/AFP/Getty 
CBS News’ British partner network BBC News said flight tracking data showed the plane fell more than 17,000 feet in two minutes around 8:21 a.m. local time.
Yasmin Abukasis, whose daughter was on board, told reporters at Tel Aviv’s Ben Gurion Airport, where the plane was due to land, that her daughter heard screams as a pilot called for help.
“The plane starts to lose control. So everyone is screaming,” she said.
A regional official briefed on the incident told The Associated Press that a fight broke out in the cockpit apparently involving the pilots, but the official did not say what caused the altercation. The AP cited a second official confirming that Israel had dispatched warplanes, fearing a possible hijacking of the plane carrying dozens of Israeli citizens.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has warned in recent days of growing and unspecified security threats against Israel and its interests in its ongoing operations against Iran-allied Hamas in the Gaza Strip and against Hezbollah in Lebanon. Netanyahu’s office later issued a statement saying the situation was under control and Israel was working to repatriate the passengers.
The BBC reported that a recovery flight was on its way to Tabuk to pick up passengers from the hijacked plane.
Emergency landings for personnel reasons are rare but not unheard of. In 2022, two Air France pilots were suspended after fighting in the cockpit of a Geneva-Paris flight, even though the plane had landed as planned in the French capital.
FlyDubai is the lower-cost sister airline of the UAE’s state-owned flagship airline, Emirates Airlines. The United Arab Emirates has become a popular vacation destination for Israeli tourists since the two countries normalized relations in 2020.
Israel has not had a hijacking in decades, but it maintains some of the tightest airport security in the world.
Far-right Israeli National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir said in a social media post on Wednesday that “the naive idea that our enemies value life and that we should pity them received another reminder this morning in the form of a terrorist who planned to crash a plane and murder all 180 Israelis on board.”
Israeli politician Benny Gantz, who is running in the upcoming Israeli election but whose polls are poor, wrote on
“The ingenuity and courage shown by the passengers of this flight, in the face of obvious mortal danger, is exactly what our people are made of,” he said.
US Ambassador to Israel Mike Huckabee also posted about the incident on Wednesday, saying: “Well, everyone in the Middle East (especially Israel) was on FULL ALERT this morning.”
“I’m glad it’s not more serious,” he added, “but having pilots in flight taking a detour to the ‘first city’ is not an ordinary experience.”
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