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 on Wednesday after an apparent altercation in the cockpit, raising concerns about a possible hijacking and prompting Israel to scramble fighter jets.

Israeli media outlets, citing security officials, said the incident stemmed from a fight between the commercial plane's two pilots and that everyone on board was safe after it landed in Tabuk, where there is a civilian airport adjacent to a Saudi military base.

The Jerusalem Post reported that one pilot tried to hijack the plane but was subdued by other members of the flight crew and passengers, citing an unnamed Israeli official who told the newspaper that a "major disaster was narrowly avoided."

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

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.

Yasmin Abukasis, whose daughter was on the flight, told journalists at Tel Aviv's Ben Gurion Airport, where the plane had been due to land, that her daughter heard screaming as a pilot called for help.

"The plane start to lose control. So all the people, they scream," she said.

A regional official briefed on the incident told the Associated Press a fight broke out in the cockpit apparently involving the pilots, but the official did not say what had caused the altercation. The AP cited a second official confirming that Israel had scrambled warplanes, fearing a possible hijacking of the plane carrying dozens of Israeli citizens. 

The aircraft's captain and the first officer were injured and taken to the hospital, according to a statement from the Prince Sultan bin Abdulaziz International Airport in Tabuk, which was relayed by the Saudi state-run Alekhbariya television network.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has 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. Netanyahu's office later issued a statement saying the situation was under control and Israel was working to bring the passengers home.

The BBC reported that a recovery flight was on its way to Tabuk to pick up the passengers from the diverted plane.

Emergency landings for personnel reasons are rare but not unheard of. In 2022, two Air France pilots were suspended after fighting in the cockpit on a Geneva-to-Paris flight, though the plane landed as scheduled in the French capital.

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."