FlyDubai Jet Bound for Israel Diverts to Saudi Arabia After Cockpit Stabbing; Israel Says Terror Plot Foiled

A FlyDubai flight from Dubai to Israel made an emergency landing in Saudi Arabia on Wednesday after a violent struggle in the cockpit, an episode Israeli officials described as an attempted terror attack that was thwarted by passengers and crew.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said in a video statement that one pilot stabbed the other as the plane approached Israel and appeared intent on crashing the aircraft with everyone aboard. He praised passengers and crew members who intervened and said he had instructed Israel’s security establishment to prepare for possible additional threats.

An Israeli security official told CBS News that authorities were investigating whether the incident could have been an attempted Sept. 11-style attack and whether the attacker acted alone. Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz called it “an attempted jihadist terror attack” and credited several Israeli passengers with breaking into the cockpit, overpowering the attacker and helping return control of the aircraft to another flight crew member who was on board.

The aircraft diverted to Tabuk, where a civilian airport sits next to a Saudi military base. No passengers were injured, according to officials, but the pilot who was attacked sustained stab wounds. Saudi authorities said two crew members were hospitalized with unspecified injuries.

Netanyahu said the pilot who carried out the stabbing was arrested and was being questioned by Saudi authorities. An Omani official confirmed to CBS News that the attacker was born in Oman and holds Omani citizenship.

Passengers later arrived in Tel Aviv shortly before 8 p.m. local time Wednesday. People could be heard singing and chanting as they disembarked, and family members gathered at the airport to celebrate their safe return.

Passenger Miryam Shira Ohayon said the plane dropped “very, very sharply suddenly” several times before leveling out. She said the aircraft was “pretty much out of control” when the stabbing occurred 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 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.”

Ohayon added that a doctor provided first aid and that people treated both pilots. “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,” she 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. One of them did so after passengers managed to remove the attacker from the cockpit, the passenger said. A passenger seated near the front described a “group of young people” fighting with the attacker.

FlyDubai flight 1073, a Boeing 737 Max 8, transmitted an emergency alert shortly after takeoff Wednesday, according to publicly available flight tracking information. CBS News’ British partner network BBC News said tracking data showed the aircraft plunged more than 17,000 feet in two minutes around 8:21 a.m. local time.

An Israeli official with direct knowledge of the situation told CBS News that the Israeli Air Force was the first to notice something was wrong. It saw the flight deviate from its route and descend at an alarming rate, the official said. When it tried to contact the plane, there was no response. It then received an emergency alert specifying a hijacking, not merely a distress call.

At that point, the flight was still several hundred miles from Israeli airspace. But within roughly 90 seconds, the air force feared a 9/11-style attack and decided to close Israeli airspace, the official said. Seconds later, it scrambled several fighter jets. The jets never left Israeli airspace because it became clear the plane had turned toward Saudi Arabia and that Saudi Arabia had scrambled its own jets, the official said. The sequence unfolded over about two to three minutes, and the entire episode lasted roughly 15 minutes, according to the official.

FlyDubai said in a statement that “an altercation occurred in the flight deck” and that the aircraft “was successfully secured by on-duty FlyDubai crew traveling on the flight, who diverted and landed the aircraft safely” in Saudi Arabia. The airline said all passengers and crew were safe and accounted for, and confirmed that two replacement aircraft had been sent to Tabuk to relieve passengers and crew. Many Israeli passengers told media outlets they would not reboard a FlyDubai plane.

“At this early stage, the underlying reasons and motives behind this event are unknown and remain subject to a formal investigation,” the airline said, urging all parties to refrain from premature speculation while authorities gather the facts.

The incident comes amid heightened regional tensions. Netanyahu had warned in recent days of unspecified, escalating security threats to Israel and its interests as Israel continues operations against Iran-allied Hamas in the Gaza Strip and Hezbollah in Lebanon. FlyDubai is the low-cost sister carrier of Emirates, the state-owned flagship airline of the United Arab Emirates. 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. The episode is likely to intensify scrutiny of regional aviation security and could complicate the growing but sensitive travel links between Israel and the UAE.

Israel’s far-right national security minister, Itamar Ben-Gvir, said in a social media post Wednesday that “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 the 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.” He added that “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.”

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.” He added: “Glad it wasn’t more serious, but having pilots inflight detouring to ‘fist city’ not your ordinary experience.”