Terror at 34,000ft: All we know about ‘hijacking’ attempt on flight to Israel as suspect arrested

Want to bookmark your favourite articles and stories to read or reference later? Start your Independent Membership today.

A pilot on an Israel-bound flight stabbed another pilot and may have deliberately tried to crash the plane before passengers wrestled back control and the aircraft landed safely in Saudi Arabia.

Flydubai flight FZ1073 was travelling from Dubai to Tel Aviv on Wednesday when it suddenly plummeted 14,000ft in less than 30 seconds, before putting out an emergency signal and changing course over Jordan.

Israeli officials said the co-pilot of the Boeing 737 plane is believed to have stabbed the captain in a possible attempted ‘terror attack’ with around 150 Israeli passengers on board.

The incident has heightened security fears in Israel weeks before Israelis vote in the first election since the Hamas-led October 7 attack, with security a defining issue.

Flight FZ1073 took off from Dubai International Airport shortly after 3am UTC on Wednesday morning and was heading for Israel when it signalled an emergency code two hours into its journey, according to tracking website FlightRadar24.

The aircraft's data appeared to show that it had suddenly and rapidly descended by nearly 14,000ft in less than 30 seconds - a rate of nearly 500ft a second - before a first emergency signal was sent.

The flight momentarily switched its alarm to a code used to report a hijacking, before switching back to a general emergency warning. The signal sounded for seven minutes before the flight abruptly changed route and descended over Saudi Arabia.

A spokesperson for the Israeli prime minister’s office said initially that the incident was not believed to be a hijacking incident.

Reports soon emerged that a fight broke out between the pilot and the co-pilot on the flight. Video footage circulating on social media showed two men on the floor of the plane, with bloody wounds. One passenger said others helped tackle one of the pilots and tie him down.

Another passenger, Almog Itali, told the BBC that two relief pilots on board at the time, one of them British, then entered the cockpit and stabilised the plane before bringing it down safely in Saudi Arabia just before 7am.

Flydubai promptly confirmed that it had experienced an “incident” but said all passengers were safe and accounted for.

Witnesses on board the plane told Israeli media that one pilot was stabbed by another, before passengers near the front of the plane helped force the attacker out of the cockpit and subdued him.

The attacker is yet to be formally identified. An Israeli official told Reuters that the suspect detained was an Omani national. Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu said the suspect was arrested after the plane landed.

Officials speaking on condition of anonymity to brief reporters said Israel’s assessment as of Wednesday afternoon was that the incident was an attempted “terror attack” and not related to any kind of mental health issue with either pilot.

Flydubai said in a statement that at this stage the “underlying reasons and motives” for the attack are unknown and are subject to a formal investigation.

Netanyahu said that the co-pilot of the plane tried to deliberately crash the aircraft after stabbing the pilot, but that passengers held him down while other pilots landed the plane, confirming witness testimonies.

Describing the event as “a highly severe security incident”, Netanyahu said Saudi authorities would interrogate the co-pilot.

The Israeli leader quoted a passenger as saying that passengers along with a member of the crew broke into the cockpit after the aircraft “entered a tailspin and began to dive” and found the co-pilot “trying to sabotage the plane's systems”.

“They saved many lives. They prevented a heavy disaster,” he said.

Far-right national security minister Itamar Ben-Gvir said on social media that a “terrorist” had “planned to crash a plane and murder” the passengers on board.

He insisted that Israel’s “security doctrine” must “go up a level” following the incident.

Passengers covered in blood described the terrifying ordeal as a “hijacking” in the immediate aftermath.

In one video posted to social media and translated by The Times of Israel, a passenger said: “We’re here during the hijacking of an airplane. At this point we’ve subdued the terrorists, we’re approaching landing.

“Whoever is hearing me, we need help.”

Fellow passenger Itzhak Liber uploaded a video to Facebook describing the situation to his family.

“We took control of the situation here on the flight,” he said in the video, “There was an attacker with a knife who stabbed one of the pilots. We just jumped on him and restrained him together with the pilot.”

Officials are yet to identify the suspect arrested and interrogated in Saudi Arabia.

It remains unclear what the motive for the attack was, and no terror group has claimed responsibility.

Israeli defence minister Israel Katz called the incident an “attempted jihadist terror attack”, but provided no evidence.

It is unclear how the attack took place. Details of a weapon have not been published and it is unclear how the attacker managed to smuggle one onto the plane, or how the attack took place.

It is also unclear exactly how the passengers managed to subdue the pilots, or how the passengers then broke into the cockpit for a relief pilot to land the plane.