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A flydubai co-pilot allegedly stabbed the captain and tried to crash a Tel Aviv-bound jet, prompting passengers and crew to overpower him. The plane made an emergency landing in Saudi Arabia, and all 174 people on board survived.
A flydubai flight from Dubai to Tel Aviv made an emergency landing in Saudi Arabia after a co-pilot allegedly stabbed the captain and tried to crash the aircraft, Israeli officials said.
Passengers and crew overpowered the attacker, and the plane landed safely at Tabuk airport in north-western Saudi Arabia. All 174 people on board survived. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu called the episode a serious security incident and said Saudi authorities would interrogate the co-pilot. An Israeli official identified the co-pilot as an Omani national.
Officials Describe Attack as Terror Incident
There was no immediate comment from Oman or the UAE. The Israeli defence minister, Israel Katz, described the incident as an attempted jihadist attack. The terrorist had a single objective: to crash the plane, killing everyone onboard, Katz said, adding that the attack was stopped due to the heroism of several passengers. The flight, FZ1081, was over Jordan when it diverted to Saudi Arabia.
It transmitted three emergency signals, one of which indicated a possible unlawful interference. Two and a half hours after taking off from Dubai, the plane sent out an emergency signal, squawk code 7700, indicating a general emergency, before sending out another, code 7500, indicating a potential hijacking attempt. The plane descended about 16,000 feet in just two minutes during the reported struggle, according to the current article, while eyewitnesses reported a descent of 17,000 feet in two minutes.
Israeli officials scrambled fighter jets, fearing a possible hijacking of a plane carrying dozens of Israelis. A passenger, Miryam Shira Ohayon, said the plane was pretty much out of control when the alleged stabbing took place. She said the co-pilot tried to murder the pilot and basically carry out a suicide attack on the plane. She spoke to reporters on speakerphone held up by her mother, who was waiting at Ben Gurion airport near Tel Aviv.
She added that a doctor onboard had treated the wounded pilot. Netanyahu said the wounded captain, identified by the Israeli leader's office as Smit Machchhar, an Indian national, was covered with blood on the floor when he managed to click the release to open the cockpit door. A Netanyahu spokesperson told Reuters that passengers who entered found the co-pilot bashing at the plane's control panel.
Netanyahu praised the captain, saying: Despite being stabbed and seriously injured, he fought back, resisted, opened the cockpit door, and enabled passengers and crew to overpower the attacker, preventing a catastrophic mid-air disaster. He credited him with saving 174 people onboard. Passenger Yaniv Hayoun later recounted how he and other passengers heard screaming and felt pressure as the plane dived before forcing their way into the cockpit and finding the attacker at the instrument panel.
I grabbed the attacker, put him in a chokehold, and dragged him out first, Hayoun said during a meeting with Netanyahu after the plane had landed safely and the passengers were flown to Israel. He was trying to destroy the instruments to disable the plane. Another passenger, Lital Shachaf, described the experience as a miracle, saying it was awful, crazy, and they thanked God they survived.
Passengers and Crew Overpower Attacker
Asaf Rajuan, one of the passengers who helped restrain the attacker, said it was something you do without thinking, just running to save your daughter's life and your family's life. He spoke with a forehead still bloodied from the struggle. Among those who intervened was an off-duty British pilot, according to a passenger, Almog Itali, who said the plane was carrying a pair of relief pilots meant to fly the next flight.
The relief pilots are European, one of them British, who entered the cockpit and pulled the aircraft up, pulled the yoke, stabilised the plane and landed us in Saudi Arabia, Itali said in a clip posted by the BBC. Also among those who stopped the apparent attack were Israeli security forces and air marshals, the Associated Press reported, citing sources close to the Saudi investigation.
Videos of the incident showed passengers screaming as the plane descended, as well as a blood-covered man who appeared to be the pilot injured and on the floor. Yasmin Abu Kaiss, whose daughter was on the flight, told Reuters her daughter said she had heard screaming and a man with a knife had put a pilot on the floor, and that there was blood everywhere.
Israel's ambulance service said a 51-year-old man was taken to an Israeli hospital to be treated for injuries to his upper body. The man was in a mild condition. Saudi Arabia's Tabuk airport said both pilots had been hospitalised after sustaining injuries and that the plane landed at 9:45am local time. More than 10 hours later, the passengers arrived at Tel Aviv's Ben Gurion Airport aboard a flydubai replacement aircraft.
The passengers of the diverted flight landed in Israel on Wednesday evening on a replacement aircraft, eight hours after their emergency landing. Flydubai said in a statement that the underlying reasons for the event remained unknown and warned against premature speculation. The Dubai-state-owned airline said an altercation occurred in the cockpit and that the flight was subsequently diverted to Tabuk, where it landed safely.
The UAE's aviation regulator, the GCAA, said the flight experienced a security incident that was brought under control. The UAE government had yet to comment. Israeli officials said they were investigating whether the incident was an attempted terror attack on Israelis. The attacker's motive aboard the flight remained under investigation.
Authorities Investigate Attacker Motive
Israel's transport ministry said it would carry out a joint investigation with the defence establishment. Israeli officials, speaking on condition of anonymity to reporters, said the attacker was an Omani national and that Israel's current assessment of the incident was that it was a terror attack. Israeli media published conflicting reports, with some outlets reporting that a pilot had tried to crash the passenger plane in an alleged suicide attempt.
Some Israeli media outlets initially identified the pilots as Omani and Emirati nationals, while others said they were Russian and Ukrainian. Israeli officials initially scrambled fighter jets after the emergency signals were sent out, fearing an attack on Israel or that the plane would be diverted to a third country. A spokesperson for the Israeli prime minister's office then said the incident was not a hijacking, as media reports circulated of a fight between the two pilots.
Israel Tightens Pilot Security Checks
The incident sharpened concerns about global aviation security in a region scarred by years of conflict, prompting Israel to tighten checks on pilots flying into the country. Doron Spielman, a Netanyahu spokesperson, told Reuters that every pilot flying into Israel would have their identity known and undergo some type of security check.
The incident heightened security fears in Israel weeks before Israelis vote in the first election since the Hamas-led October 7, 2023, attacks, with Israel's security figuring prominently in the campaigning. The incident came just days after Netanyahu had warned there were indications an attack would be carried out during Israel's October elections. Netanyahu met on Sunday with UAE President Sheikh Mohamed bin Zayed Al Nahyan during a rare visit to the Gulf country.
Israel and the UAE signed the Abraham Accords normalising relations in 2020 and have forged close security, military and economic ties since establishing diplomatic ties. Israel provided the UAE earlier this year with Iron Dome air-defence systems and Israeli personnel to operate them, helping defend against Iranian attacks launched after Israel and the US began strikes on Iran. Flydubai operates daily return flights between Dubai and Tel Aviv, a route that is popular among Israeli nationals.
The flight path normally uses airspace over Saudi Arabia and Jordan. It is not the first time a flight between Israel and the UAE has landed in Saudi Arabia. A flydubai flight from Dubai to Tel Aviv made an emergency landing in Riyadh in September 2025 due to a medical incident, Israeli media reported at the time.
The head of the Israeli military, Lt Gen Eyal Zamir, has postponed a visit to the US over the incident, where he was meant to have a meeting with US joint chiefs of staff and the head of US Central Command. Israel's military, quoted by Israeli media, said it had no immediate comment.
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GuardianAus:What we know so far about alleged stabbing of pilot by co-pilot on flight to IsraelThis story was compiled and edited by the HeadTopics newsroom and HT AI from the reports above.
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