FlyDubai flight lands in Saudi after pilot attack in cockpit foiled

A FlyDubai flight from the United Arab Emirates to Israel made an emergency landing in Saudi Arabia after one pilot tried to stab the other and seize control of the aircraft with the aim of crashing it, according to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. The incident on Wednesday involved flight FZ1073, which was carrying about 170 passengers, many of them Israelis.

The plane rapidly lost altitude during the mid-air struggle, prompting Israel to scramble fighter jets amid fears of a possible hijacking. Netanyahu said a passenger and a crew member managed to get into the cockpit, helping other crew members regain control and bring the aircraft down safely in Tabuk about an hour later.

The distress call came at 8.44 am local time, around two-and-a-half hours after the flight left Dubai for Tel Aviv. Netanyahu said the captain and first officer had been fighting in the cockpit after one of them tried to stab the other and crash the plane. During the episode, the aircraft dropped from 33,000 feet to 17,000 feet in about a minute before circling near the Jordanian border and then heading to Tabuk in Saudi Arabia.

Both pilots were injured and needed hospital treatment, according to a statement from Tabuk's Prince Sultan bin Abdulaziz International Airport. Netanyahu said Saudi Arabia had arrested one of the pilots. A plane carrying passengers from the flight landed in Israel on Wednesday evening. The incident came days before the anniversary of the October 7, 2023 attack on Israel that triggered the war in Gaza, and it has renewed concern about airline security.

Netanyahu, citing a passenger he had spoken to, said a passenger and a crew member broke into the cockpit, allowing other crew members to enter and fly the plane to a safe landing. How they got into the cockpit is unclear, as cockpit doors are kept locked during flights for security reasons, a rule that became standard after the September 11, 2001 attacks in the United States. The doors are also reinforced to withstand attempts to break them down.

It is also unclear how a knife was brought onboard and how large it was. Pilots go through strict screening, including metal detectors, and airlines usually check their criminal and employment history as well as their physical and mental health, alongside intelligence and security screening. Israel-bound flights are known for especially tight security, with passengers often questioned and their baggage searched after normal checks, though it is not known whether the pilots on this flight faced equally strict screening. The case has also drawn comparisons with rare past failures in aviation security, including the 2015 Germanwings crash in which a co-pilot deliberately brought down a plane, killing all 150 people onboard.

The flight ended without loss of life, but the mid-air struggle, rapid descent and emergency landing have left major questions over how the attack happened, how the cockpit was breached and how a weapon reached the aircraft.