TABUK, Saudi Arabia — A flydubai jet bound for Tel Aviv diverted and landed in Saudi Arabia on Wednesday after a cockpit attack that Israeli leaders are calling an attempted hijacking and terror attack. Passengers and off-duty pilots stopped it. Israelis were on board.
Flight FZ1073 left Dubai for Tel Aviv on Wednesday morning. It never got there. The jet made an emergency landing in Tabuk, in northwestern Saudi Arabia. flydubai confirmed that an incident occurred, that the aircraft landed safely, and that its teams are working with the relevant authorities.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, in his first public statement on the landing, called it an extremely serious security incident. “Almost all of the passengers on the flight were Israelis,” he said. As the plane drew close to Israel, “one of the pilots stabbed the other pilot, and all indications show that he tried to crash the plane along with its passengers.”
Netanyahu said he spoke with an Israeli passenger who told him the plane went into a dive. That passenger said he broke into the cockpit with a crew member and that together they stopped the attacker while he was trying to damage the plane’s systems. Another crew member then got the aircraft stabilized. Netanyahu said Saudi authorities are interrogating the suspect, and that he has ordered Israel’s security services to take steps so this does not happen again. He saluted the people who stopped it. “They prevented a serious tragedy.”
Defense Minister Israel Katz was blunter. “The grave incident on the flydubai plane was a jihadist terrorist attack attempt, which was thwarted only thanks to the bravery of several Israeli passengers who broke into the cockpit, overpowered the terrorist and, with their own hands, restored control of the plane to another flight crew who was present there,” Katz said. “According to the initial information in our possession, the terrorist had one intention: to crash the plane with all its passengers.”
Passengers told reporters the aircraft was a Boeing 737 Max carrying 174 people, and that two off-duty pilots who were on board stepped in and landed it in Tabuk. One passenger account described those relief pilots as European, including one Briton. Reports also describe a steep drop and damage to the jet’s rudder. Those details are still passenger and media accounts, not a finished official reconstruction.
The attacker has not been officially named. Israeli outlets report that he is an Omani national who had worked at flydubai for less than a year. That identification is not confirmed by the airline. What is confirmed, by Israel’s prime minister and defense minister, is the intent they see in the attack and who stopped it.
Netanyahu said Israel is in continuous contact with the authorities to get the passengers home safely. The heroes of Wednesday morning are the Israelis who forced their way into that cockpit and the pilots who put the jet on the ground in Tabuk.
