FlyDubai passengers recount terrifying ordeal as pilot allegedly attempts to hijack, crash Israel-bound flight

The passengers’ stories paint a chaotic and terrifying picture of the situation. Alleged attempted hijacking of FlyDubai Flight 1073 Wednesday. The flight from Dubai to Tel Aviv was forced to make an emergency landing in Saudi Arabia, and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said a pilot stabbed his counterpart and tried to crash the Boeing 737 Max 8.

“As they approached Israel, one of the pilots stabbed the other pilot and apparently tried to crash the plane with everyone on board,” Netanyahu said in a video statement, praising the passengers who he said had helped “neutralize the pilot.”

Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz called it an “attempted jihadist terrorist attack.”

“It was the scariest experience we’ve ever had in our lives,” passenger Ron Levi told CBS News on Wednesday.

Two U.S. officials told CBS News that four people with dual U.S.-Israeli citizenship were on the flight.

Here’s what we know about how the alleged terrorist attack unfolded, based on accounts from Levi and other passengers.

“Worse than a free fall”

“The flight was going well, we were two hours in,” Levi told CBS News’ Dov Lieber, speaking from Tabuk, Saudi Arabia, where the plane made its emergency landing safely, piloted by an off-duty crew member who was on board.

“All of a sudden, what we thought was turbulence started,” Levi said. It kept getting stronger and “we realized it wasn’t a regular thing.”

“I would say a lot worse than a free fall,” he said, describing how the plane “started turning sideways and going up and down in all kinds of directions, for quite a long time.”

“It’s very difficult to even estimate whether it lasted 30 seconds, a minute or more… it was just the scariest thing possible.”

Levi sat in a row of seats with his family, “just holding hands and saying we love them and just hoping for the best.”

“And then screaming started from the front of the plane,” he recalled. He saw people getting up near the front.

“Very stressful situation”

Passenger Adam Polo was in row 13, hugging his 6-year-old son while his wife hugged their 3-year-old daughter. Polo told CBS News that he was “trying to be cool” for his children and told them, “Everything will be fine.”

“The first few minutes were very terrifying; it just felt like we were about to crash, but even after the plane stabilized, we were in the air for over an hour without the main crew members,” Polo said.

Polo said he couldn’t see much from his seat, but after 15 minutes he saw a passenger running out of the cockpit, covered in blood.

“No one on the crew told us what was happening,” Polo said. “The only ones who gave us information were the passengers who stood up courageously.”

Polo, who lives in Israel and was on vacation in Thailand with his family, said everything happened so quickly and it was a “very stressful situation.”

“I’m a pretty cynical guy, I don’t get excited easily, but I think it was one of the most exciting moments of my life when the plane hit the ground,” Polo said.

“The co-pilot tried to murder the pilot”

Levi said he was not close enough to see what happened next, but several other passengers who spoke with Israeli media said one pilot stabbed the other, details that were also repeated by Netanyahu.

“According to the initial information in our possession, the terrorist’s intention was one thing: to crash the plane with all its passengers,” said Katz, the Israeli defense chief.

Netanyahu said he spoke with an Israeli passenger who told him that “somehow he managed to break into the cockpit with one of the crew members, and together they neutralized the pilot who carried out the attack as he tried to sabotage the plane’s systems.”

Passenger Miryam Shira Ohayon said the plane was “almost out of control” when the stabbing attack took place, she said, somewhere over Jordan.

“The co-pilot tried to assassinate the pilot and basically commit a suicide attack on the plane,” she told reporters by loudspeaker, held back by her mother who was waiting for her at Ben Gurion Airport near Tel Aviv. “He was really close to crashing, and it was just the ingenuity of many people who took control of the co-pilot and incapacitated him.”

Another passenger told The Jerusalem Post that the passengers who intervened 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.

Netanyahu said the person who “managed to stabilize the plane” was “another member of the crew who was on board the plane.”

“All we heard in the back was screaming,” Levi said. “We saw that some people were taking care of things, and it continued like that for, I think, about 10, 20 minutes until… the shaking (of the plane) relaxed.”

“The rumors started coming in and we realized it wasn’t just about turbulence,” he said. “It was something…much worse than that.”

“They are heroes,” he said of the people who intervened to stop the attacking pilot. “We owe them our lives.”

Levi said he saw people covered in blood.

“They are also here with us now,” he told CBS News from the airport in Saudi Arabia. “These are the people I’m talking about who… even jumped into the cockpit and saved the day.”

According to Ohayon, a doctor and others on board helped treat the pilot for unspecified injuries.

“Apart from the pilot, there were no injuries, but the biggest fear was actually an accident, which is exactly what he was trying to do,” she said.

“I just want to go home”

An Israeli security official told CBS News on Wednesday that Israel was investigating whether it was a 9/11-style terrorist attack and whether the attacker was working alone.

The pilot was arrested and questioned by Saudi authorities, Netanyahu said, adding that Israel was working to return the passengers to Israel safely.

“There’s another FlyDubai plane here now,” Levi said. “People are understandably a little hesitant to get into it. … We want to get home, but we want to do it safely.”

When asked how he dealt with the incident, Levi replied, “Honestly, I’m not even starting. We’re all shaking here…I have no idea. I just want to go home.”

The plane landed safely in Tel Aviv on Wednesday around 8 p.m. local time. Cheers and chants could be heard as passengers disembarked.