FlyDubai flight to Israel makes emergency landing, passenger says "co-pilot tried to murder the pilot" and crash jet

A FlyDubai flight from Dubai to Israel was forced to make an emergency landing in Saudi Arabia on Wednesday after a violent attempt by one of the pilots to seize control of the aircraft and crash it, passengers and Israeli officials said. 

"As they were approaching Israel, one of the pilots stabbed the other pilot and apparently attempted to crash the plane with everyone on board," Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said in a video statement, lauding passengers and other crew members who intervened. The prime minister said he instructed Israel's "security establishment to prepare for potential additional threats."

An Israeli security official told CBS News authorities were investigating the possibility that the incident could have been an attempted Sept. 11-style terror attack, and whether the attacker was working alone. 

Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz called it "an attempted jihadist terror attack, which was thwarted only thanks to the heroism of several Israeli passengers who broke into the cockpit, overpowered the terrorist, and with their own hands returned control of the aircraft to an additional flight crew that was present," according to a statement.

The plane diverted to make an emergency landing in Tabuk, where there is a civilian airport adjacent to a Saudi military base. No passengers were injured in the incident, but the pilot who was attacked by his fellow crew member reportedly sustained stab wounds, and Saudi authorities said two crew members were hospitalized with unspecified injuries. 

According to Netanyahu, the pilot who carried out the stabbing was placed under arrest and was "being questioned by the Saudi authorities." An Omani official confirmed to CBS News that the attacker was born in Oman and currently holds Omani citizenship.

In a social media post, the Israel Foreign Ministry identified the wounded pilot as Capt. Smit Machchhar, an Indian national. It described him as a "hero" who "fought back after being stabbed in the cockpit."

According to the foreign ministry, Machchhar unlocked the cockpit door to allow passengers and crew to enter and intervene. 

"Together, their extraordinary courage saved 174 lives," the foreign ministry said. 

The plane landed in Tel Aviv shortly before 8 p.m. local time on Wednesday. People could be heard singing and chanting as the passengers disembarked. Family members came to the airport to celebrate their loved ones' safe return. 

One passenger said the plane dropped "very, very sharply suddenly" multiple times before balancing out. Passenger Miryam Shira Ohayon said the plane was "pretty much out of control" when the stabbing took place over Jordan.

"The co-pilot tried to murder the pilot and basically carry out a suicide attack on the plane," she told reporters by speakerphone held up by her mother, who was waiting at Ben Gurion Airport near Tel Aviv. "It was really on the way to crashing, and it was simply the resourcefulness of many people who took control of the co-pilot and neutralized him." 

"There was also a doctor who gave first aid, and people who treated both of them. Other than the pilot, there were no injuries, but the bigger fear was really a crash, which is exactly what he was trying to do," Ohayon said. 

Another passenger told The Jerusalem Post that intervening passengers shouted at two off-duty pilots at the back of the plane "to run and take control" of it, and one of them did so after the passengers managed to remove the attacker from the cockpit.

One passenger seated at the front of the plane said a "group of young people fought" with the attacker.   

The crew of FlyDubai flight 1073, a Boeing 737 Max 8 aircraft, transmitted an emergency alert shortly after takeoff on Wednesday, according to publicly available flight tracking information. CBS News' British partner network BBC News said flight tracking data showed the aircraft plummeted more than 17,000 feet in two minutes around 8:21 a.m. local time.

The Israeli Air Force was first to notice something was wrong, an Israeli official with direct knowledge of the situation told CBS News. The air force noticed the flight deviating from its flight path and descending at an alarming rate, the official said. When it tried to contact the plane, it received no response. It then got the emergency alert that specified a hijacking, not just a distress call.

At that point, according to the official, the flight was still several hundred miles from Israeli airspace. However, even 90 seconds or so into the incident, the air force feared a 9/11-style attack, so it immediately made the decision to close Israeli airspace, and seconds after that it scrambled several jets, the official said.

The jets never left Israeli airspace because it became clear that the plane had turned toward Saudi Arabia, and that Saudi Arabia had scrambled its own jets, the official said. 

This sequence of events occurred within the span of about two to three minutes, according to the official, and the entire episode lasted about 15 minutes. 

A statement from FlyDubai said only that "an altercation occurred in the flight deck" and that the aircraft "was successfully secured by on-duty FlyDubai crew traveling on the flight, who diverted and landed the aircraft safely" in Saudi Arabia. 

The airline said "all passengers and crew are safe and accounted for," and it confirmed that two replacement aircraft had been deployed to Tabuk to "relieve the passengers and crew," though many Israeli passengers told media outlets they would not reboard a FlyDubai plane. 

"At this early stage, the underlying reasons and motives behind this event are unknown and remain subject to a formal investigation," the airline said in its statement, urging "all parties to refrain from premature speculation while authorities gather the facts."

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

Netanyahu had warned in recent days of unspecified, escalating security threats to Israel and its interests amid its ongoing operations against Iran-allied Hamas in the Gaza Strip and Hezbollah in Lebanon.  

FlyDubai is the lower-cost sister carrier of the United Arab Emirates state-owned flagship carrier Emirates. The UAE has become a popular vacation destination for Israeli tourists since the two nations normalized ties in 2020.

Israel has not experienced a plane hijacking in decades, but it maintains some of the strictest airport security in the world. 

Israel's far-right national security minister, Itamar Ben-Gvir, in a social media post on Wednesday, said "the naive notion that our enemies value life and that we should have mercy on them received another reminder this morning in the form of a terrorist who planned to crash a plane and murder the 180 Israelis on board."

Israeli politician Benny Gantz, who is running in the upcoming Israeli elections but polling badly, wrote on X: "It's still too early to know what the sequence of events was in this morning's Flydubai flight to Israel, but it's already clear that Israelis are a rare breed."

"The resourcefulness and courage displayed by the passengers on this flight, in the face of clear mortal danger, are exactly the stuff our people are made of," he said.

U.S. Ambassador to Israel Mike Huckabee also posted about the incident Wednesday, saying: "Well this had everyone in the Middle East (esp Israel) on FULL ALERT this morning."  

"Glad it wasn't more serious," he added, "but having pilots inflight detouring to 'fist city' not your ordinary experience."