FlyDubai Flight 1073 was about an hour from landing at Tel Aviv, Israel, on Wednesday when the Boeing 737 MAX 8 began shaking violently as it plunged toward earth, a passenger later recalled.
“We felt that the plane was out of control and starting to dive, with very unusual jolts,” Dalia Shpigel told Israeli media.
Then she heard a woman screaming, “They’re murdering here, they’re murdering here!”
In what Israel’s Foreign Ministry labeled an “attempted terrorist attack,” one of the plane’s pilots stabbed the other and reportedly tried to crash the aircraft, which was carrying 174 passengers and crew from Dubai to Tel Aviv. But a group of passengers rushed the cockpit, subdued the attacker and stabilized the plane. With another pilot who was onboard taking the controls, the plane landed safely in Tabuk, Saudi Arabia.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said the passengers “prevented a disaster.” He described the episode as a “serious security incident” that remains under investigation by Israeli authorities.
Citing anonymous sources, The Jerusalem Post reported that Israeli intelligence agencies believe the attacker was a “lone wolf” who was not working with terrorist groups or foreign adversaries such as Iran.
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‘Overpower the terrorist’
Israeli officials said one pilot — identified only as a citizen of Oman, a country that does not have diplomatic relations with Israel — stabbed the other pilot, Capt. Smit Machchhar, an Indian national, during an altercation in the cockpit.
As they fought, the plane plunged about 17,000 feet within two minutes, according to FlightRadar24.
Netanyahu described Machchhar as a hero.
“Despite being stabbed and severely injured, he fought back, resisted, opened the cockpit door and enabled passengers and crew to overpower the attacker, preventing a catastrophic mid-air disaster,” Netanyahu said. “He saved the lives of 174 people, including Israeli citizens and other nationals.”
After hearing screams, several passengers charged toward the cockpit.
“There were no pilots in the seats; one was on the floor, one was on the [control panel],” passenger Yaniv Hayoun said later. The second pilot, he said, appeared to be trying to “disable the plane.”
“I called out to a bunch of Israelis on board, and two other guys came over,” Hayoun said. “We pinned him down. I jumped back, grabbed the controls, and started pulling back the handles.”
Passenger Assaf Rajwan told the Israeli newspaper Haaretz that he followed another passenger toward the cockpit.
“He and I and two other guys tried to overpower the terrorist, and we succeeded,” Rajwan said. “The crew also helped us.
“What I know is that the plane lost control and dropped, and luckily the right people were there at the right time,” he said. “They managed to stabilize the plane and saved a lot of families.”
Passengers said they pulled the attacker from the cockpit and tied his hands with cables from a set of headphones. The two British pilots who were among the passengers took control of the plane and made an emergency landing in Saudi Arabia, where both pilots were hospitalized.
All passengers were later flown on another plane to Tel Aviv, where they related stories of terror and heroism.
‘A huge miracle’
The incident evoked memories of EgyptAir Flight 990, which was on a scheduled flight from New York to Cairo when it plunged into the Atlantic Ocean on Oct. 31, 1999.
An investigation by the National Transportation Safety Board indicated that the plane’s co-pilot intentionally crashed the plane into the ocean by performing “irrational” maneuvers while the captain was absent from the cockpit. The Egyptian government disputed the finding, saying the plane crashed because of mechanical failures.
The crash killed all 217 people on board.
On Wednesday’s flight, as the plane plummeted, passengers said they assumed the worst.
“It was a harrowing experience,” a passenger identified only as Naomi told reporters after landing in Israel. “There was a young woman next to me who was crying. I held her hand and told her, ‘Listen, we hit an air pocket. It’s an air pocket, just a rough one.’ I was lying to myself, too, let’s put it that way.”
Another passenger, Zvika Mans, described the plane’s safe landing and “a huge miracle.”
“The plane was already heading into a nosedive,” Mans said, “but they managed to stabilize it.”
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