By SAMY MAGDY, MELANIE LIDMAN and ISAAC SCHARF Associated Press
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.
As some passengers screamed, the FlyDubai flight issued an emergency alert and abruptly descended thousands of feet (meters). Israel scrambled warplanes amid concerns about a possible hijacking.
As a plane carrying passengers from the flight landed Wednesday evening in Israel, it was not clear what motivated the attack.
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.
Two pilots fought, and passengers and crew intervened
An Israeli official said a fight broke out between two pilots, one of whom was armed with a knife. The official spoke on condition of anonymity because the incident was under investigation.
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, Netanyahu said, citing a passenger he spoke to. Other crew members 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.
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.”
An official confirmed that Israel had scrambled warplanes, fearing a hijacking. The official spoke on condition of anonymity because the incident was under investigation.
Passengers screamed when they heard a fight
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 crew started to lose control of the jet, causing passengers to scream, but eventually two people were able to wrest control of the plane while others attempted to subdue the attacker.
Passengers told Israel’s Channel 12 by phone they heard shouts from those sitting near the front of the plane who heard the 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.
Former United Airlines pilot and aviation safety expert Steve Arroyo said he was surprised that the plane was able to land safely after most of the rudder was ripped off the tail during the extreme descent.
“That was a serious descent and strong aerodynamic forces on that rudder for that to happen. I’m just amazed the aircraft didn’t come apart,” Arroyo said.
Israelis have made emergency landings in Saudi Arabia before
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 Scharf from Jerusalem. Associated Press writers Sam Metz and Aamer Madhani in Jerusalem, Ami Ben Tov in Tel Aviv, Israel, Josh Funk in Omaha, Nebraska, and Adam Schreck in Bangkok contributed to this report.