Dubai to Israel flight 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 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 said he had instructed Israel's "security establishment to prepare for potential additional threats."

An Israeli security official told CBS News that 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 attacked by his fellow crewmember 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."

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.

Israeli sources told the Post the would-be hijacker was an Omani national. There was no immediate confirmation of the details from Israeli or Saudi officials.

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.

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 confirmed 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."

The Associated Press cited an official as saying Israel scrambled warplanes during the incident, fearing a possible hijacking of the plane carrying dozens of Israeli citizens.

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 airlines. 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 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."