Flydubai co-pilot tried to crash Israel-bound jet after stabbing the captain, officials say; passengers stormed the cockpit to stop him

Passengers and crew stormed the cockpit of a flydubai flight from Dubai to Tel Aviv on Wednesday after the co-pilot stabbed the captain and sent the jet plunging more than 14,000 feet in about 30 seconds -- an attempted 'terror attack' that Israeli officials say was stopped only when travelers wrestled the controls away and a second flydubai crew that happened to be aboard landed the plane in Saudi Arabia.

Thirty seconds of falling

Flightradar24's playback of FZ1073 shows the Boeing 737 Max cruising at 34,000 feet over Saudi Arabia, westbound toward Tel Aviv, when it dropped more than 14,000 feet in 30 seconds. The jet veered northwest, briefly crossed into Jordanian airspace, then returned to Saudi airspace and flew on to Tabuk in the northwest. Along the way it transmitted a general emergency signal, then a second signal indicating possible unlawful interference, then the general emergency again -- the digital fingerprints of a cockpit in chaos.

For passenger Almog Italie, the first warning was physical. 'It was dropping like for 20, 30 seconds, and then balanced, and then started dropping again, and balanced again,' he told Reuters. At first it felt like 'massive turbulence' -- and then he realized a life-or-death struggle had unfolded in the cockpit.

That the airframe held together through it became its own story overnight. Donald Trump praised Boeing on Truth Social, writing that the 737 Max 'was able to withstand G Forces and Strain far beyond what it was designed and expected to do' -- an 'amazing show of precise and powerful structural planning and design.'

The fight for the cockpit

Israeli officials say the co-pilot, identified by one official as an Omani national, stabbed the captain and tried to force the plane down. The wounded captain -- Smit Machchhar, an Indian national with nearly 10,000 hours in the air who spent 11 years at SpiceJet before joining flydubai in 2022 -- used 'the last moments of his energy' to click open the release on the cockpit door, according to Doron Spielman, a spokesman for the prime minister's office.

'At that moment, some of the passengers that realised something was happening raced forward, entered the pilot's cabin. They saw the injured pilot on the ground, and the other ... the attacking pilot was standing over the control panel, bashing the control panel,' Spielman told Reuters. A video filmed on board and verified by Reuters captured the aftermath: two bloodied men on the floor, one identified in Hebrew as the pilot 'they tried to murder,' the other -- three stripes on his epaulette -- as the co-pilot. 'We were attacked now, on this airplane, they tried to murder the pilot, and we took control,' a bloodied man in a black shirt says into the camera.

Both pilots were hospitalised at Tabuk after the landing; the airport confirmed both sustained injuries. Early Israeli media carried conflicting reports -- some describing a suicide attempt, some identifying the pilots as Omani and Emirati, others as Russian and Ukrainian -- a reminder of how little was confirmed in the first hours.

The passengers who saved the plane

The man Israel is calling a hero is Yaniv Hayun, 50, who was traveling with his wife and two daughters. 'We knew there was an attack because a woman screamed 'stabbing' and the plane shook,' he said. 'At that moment I ran to the cockpit and the plane dived.'

Hayun and three other Israeli passengers subdued the co-pilot -- tying him up with airline earphones, one fellow passenger said -- and Hayun pulled up the jet's unmanned steering control to right it. Asked by Netanyahu at Ben Gurion airport how he knew what to do in the seconds before the reserve crew took over, Hayun answered: 'I watch Air Crash Investigation, Mr Prime Minister.'

Defense Minister Israel Katz said the attack 'was thwarted solely thanks to the heroism of several Israeli passengers who stormed the cockpit, subdued the terrorist, and -- with their own hands -- restored control of the aircraft to an additional flight crew present on board.' A reserve flydubai crew that had been aboard took control and landed the jet at Tabuk, the airline confirmed -- and passengers described a warm reception there, with medical staff, food, 'anything we needed.' All 174 people aboard, 166 of them Israeli nationals, reached Tel Aviv on an alternate flight Wednesday evening.

President Isaac Herzog said Thursday he was nominating Hayun for the Presidential Award for Civilian Heroism, along with the other passengers who intervened. One of them, Asaf Rajuan, waved off the title: 'I'm not a hero. It's something you do without thinking, running to save your daughter's life, your family's life, your wife, and all the staff and people on the plane. You don't think, you just act.'

The root and the Iran question

Netanyahu told Fox News host Sean Hannity on Wednesday night that Israel would pursue the case wherever it leads. 'We'll get to the root of this attacker, whether he had accomplices, whether Iran was behind it. I think we'll find out very soon,' he said. Asked directly whether there was any indication of Iranian involvement, he answered: 'It's too early to say.'

By Thursday morning, on 'Fox & Friends,' Netanyahu had sharpened the portrait. 'We know that he underwent Islamist radical indoctrination,' he said of the co-pilot, adding that it was clear the man was suicidal: after being subdued and tied up with a headphone cord, the attacker begged the crew to 'kill me, kill me.' 'So it's clear he was suicidal,' Netanyahu said. 'That's not a question. It was clear he was going to down that plane.' He said he would be able to say 'within a matter of days' whether the co-pilot had connections to Iran -- while repeating that 'it's too early to say.' The 'clearly suicidal' framing sits uneasily with Wednesday's official assessment that the attack was not related to any mental-health issue -- a gap no official has yet reconciled. And an Israeli official told the Times of Israel that the suspect's social media accounts showed he had been 'radicalised into jihadist ideology': 'He talks about killing Jews,' the official said, calling him 'a suicide actor who was probably going to try to down that plane.'

The attacker is in Saudi custody. Netanyahu said he expects the co-pilot to be taken to the Emirates -- 'where he comes from, or at least where he left' -- and that Israel would 'possibly' participate in the investigation. Israel's own assessment, officials told reporters, is that this was an attempted 'terror attack' and not a mental-health episode. It was not a hijacking, Spielman said -- a 'different incident.'

Flydubai has said the underlying reasons 'remained unknown' and warned against 'premature speculation.' The airline confirmed only that the flight experienced an 'incident,' diverted to Tabuk, landed safely, and that all passengers were accounted for -- and then suspended all flights to and from Israel while the investigation continues. Emirates suspended its code-share arrangements with flydubai on the Tel Aviv routes. No motive has been established by investigators.

The policy response is already moving. Spielman told Reuters that Netanyahu had instructed authorities to ramp up security on flights to Israel -- on Israeli and non-Israeli carriers alike. 'Every pilot that is going to be flying into Israel, we are going to know the pilots' identities, know who they are, and do some type of security check,' he said.

What is still unknown

The co-pilot's identity and background remain the central gap. Beyond the single official's description of him as Omani -- Netanyahu has since called him an Omani citizen -- little is confirmed: one Jerusalem Post-sourced account said the attacker had worked at flydubai for less than a year, but that has not been officially verified, and his name has not been publicly released. Against Netanyahu's radicalization account stands the investigators' silence: Channel 12 reported 'no current indication' the attacker was directed by Iran or another organised entity, describing a 'lone wolf,' and the Associated Press reported there was 'no evidence the suspected hijacker had backing from a foreign government or organization.'

Where the investigation lands matters. The plane came down in Saudi Arabia, a country with which Israel has no official diplomatic relations, and the attacker sits in Saudi custody. Netanyahu expects him moved to the Emirates; national security minister Itamar Ben-Gvir said Thursday he would push for Israel to 'use all means available' to extradite the suspect and prosecute him in Israel. The UAE's attorney-general has ordered his own investigation -- into the circumstances, motives, and whether the act was linked to 'any terrorist activity' -- asserting jurisdiction because the aircraft is UAE-registered, while Saudi Arabia's National Transport Safety Center opened a technical investigation. Neither Omani authorities nor the UAE foreign ministry's operational arms have commented on the substance.

And the politics are immediate. The incident heightened security fears weeks before Israelis vote in the first election since the Hamas-led October 7, 2023 attacks, with security dominating the campaign. It came three days after Netanyahu's rare Sunday visit to the UAE to meet President Sheikh Mohamed bin Zayed -- a measure of how close Israeli-Emirati security ties have grown, and how exposed a single flight can make them.