A horrific mid-air catastrophe on a plane heading to Tel Aviv was averted in a stunning turn of events on Wednesday when passengers and crew bravely rushed into the cockpit and regained control of the aircraft. The pilot attempted to carry out a “terrorist act” by attacking his colleague with a crash ax inside the cockpit and trying to take control of the plane, United Arab Emirates Attorney General Hamad Saif Al Shamsi said Saturday.
The comments mark the first time the Emirati authorities have described the incident as suspected terror and also confirm an ax was used, following previous speculation a knife could have been smuggled on board. Under aviation safety rules, a crash ax is a required piece of equipment on most passenger planes. The aircraft plunged thousands of feet in two minutes, causing panic and forcing the flight to make an emergency landing in Saudi Arabia. While investigators are still probing the motive, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said in a video posted to his social media accounts Friday that the suspect had “undergone Islamist radicalization,” adding that if someone had sent him they would pay “a very heavy price.” The other pilot, identified as Smit Machchhar from India, has been hailed as a hero as he fought back and “managed to prevent a 9/11 disaster,” Netanyahu told CNN’s Jim Sciutto. “What distinguishes this incident from the other tragic attacks was that this time, the good guys won,” Netanyahu said.
What happened on board?
Flydubai flight FZ1073 departed Dubai at 6:05 a.m. local time (10:05 p.m. ET) and began flying west to its destination near Tel Aviv. About two hours after taking off, the aircraft began quickly losing altitude and turned sharply to the north, flight tracking data showed. It descended 17,400 feet in just under two minutes. The flight issued a distress call at 8:31 a.m., minutes before it squawked code 7500 — the International Civil Aviation Organization code to signal an aircraft hijacking.
Flydubai jet's altitude more than halved in less than two minutes
The Tel Aviv-bound aircraft fell 17,400 feet and sped up by 180 mph during a "violent incident" involving two pilots, following which it was diverted to Saudi Arabia.
New video has emerged showing the dramatic moments as passengers and crew entered the cockpit and battled to take control of the Flydubai plane. Several people can be seen crowded around the doorway to the cockpit, with one cabin crew member shouting at other passengers to sit down and calling for a doctor to help. One person also calls out, “We need a pilot,” as cabin crew frantically work to unpack a first aid kit. Tali Berkovich-Manes, who was heading home to Tel Aviv from a vacation with her husband and their children, alerted crew and passengers to the emergency after she witnessed the cockpit door open while she waited outside the bathroom for her daughter. Once the door was open, she saw the bloody attack happening inside the cockpit. “I just screamed: ‘They are murdering the pilot! Come help! Come help!’” she told Reuters in an interview. She added that her fellow passengers “didn’t understand” what was happening until the plane plummeted seconds later and she “went flying.” Berkovich-Manes recounted the sound of her daughters yelling: “We don’t want to die.” The mother described the actions of pilot Machchhar as “heroism.” Without his will to open the cockpit door, Berkovich-Manes does not believe she and her family would have survived. She added, “That was the beginning of the chain of miracles.” Other passengers described chaotic scenes on board the plane as the plane nosedived. “We just felt the plane drop completely and start spinning a little, and everyone was screaming, there were children crying,” passenger Mika Bauman told CNN. “I was just sure I was going to die,” she said. Some passengers took it upon themselves to charge into the cockpit and fight the attacker. Yaniv Hayoun recounted to Netanyahu how he put the alleged attacker in a chokehold and dragged him out of the cockpit with other passengers. Hayoun said he then grabbed the plane’s controls to help bring it back under control, admitting his move was inspired by watching a TV show which reconstructs real-life air disasters. “I watch Air Crash Investigation, Mr. Prime Minister — really. The plane started to level out a bit, and then the pilot told me he was taking over the controls from there,” Hayoun said. Dr. Shota Musaev, a dentist on board, told CNN he tied the attacker up using headphone cords and plastic zip ties. He then started tending to the wounded pilot. Even after the attacker was restrained, passengers remained terrified. “There was nothing but desert beneath us; we feared being taken to an enemy country or landing in the middle of the desert,” Assaf Rajuan told CNN. “We didn’t know who to trust.”
How did the plane land?
In another extraordinary turn of events, there were people on board the flight who knew how to fly a plane and were able to bring the aircraft safely down. Netanyahu and Flydubai confirmed that reserve pilots who were in the passenger area managed to regain control of the aircraft. The flight was diverted to Saudi Arabia’s Tabuk Airport, where it touched down at 9:54 a.m. David Soucie, a CNN aviation safety analyst, said it was fairly uncommon for additional on-duty pilots to be on flights “unless they are being repositioned for other flights.”
What happened to the pilots?
Video shared on social media and verified by CNN showed a gruesome scene onboard following the attack, where a seriously wounded pilot is seen lying on the floor of the aircraft, his pained face partially covered with a mask. The man is seen clutching his torso with his bloodied hands. He seems in pain, but conscious. Several passengers are seen helping him and monitoring his vital signs. Just next to him, guarded by several men, is another pilot — the man the flight’s passengers allege was the attacker. He too is wounded, lying on his side, his white shirt soaked with blood around his stomach. Both the captain and co-pilot of the plane were taken to the hospital, Saudi Arabia’s leading aviation operator said. The pilot who was attacked on the Flydubai flight suffered “massive blood loss” and was “severely wounded,” Musaev told CNN. “He was covered in cuts — his head, his hands — they were practically sliced open, almost severed in two.” A local politician in Ghatkopar East in Mumbai, where Machchhar is from, told CNN that the pilot’s family members told him he was in a stable condition after undergoing surgery at a hospital in Saudi Arabia on Wednesday. Machchhar made his first public remarks on Friday, saying that he kept fighting because he could not “let everybody else die.”
“In that moment, I was fighting for my life,” Machchhar told India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi in a video call from his hospital bed. “I was so severely wounded that I had fallen down… at that time, I was thinking what if I don’t get up?” The co-pilot and the Indian captain he is suspected of attacking left for Abu Dhabi in the United Arab Emirates on Thursday morning with an Emirati security team after being medically cleared to travel, Saudi Arabia’s interior ministry said.Who was the attacker?
Authorities are yet to divulge the identity of the pilot who allegedly attacked Machchhar. But Saudi state media named the pilot as Omani citizen, Hamam al-Hammami.
Oman and Israel do not have formal diplomatic relations, and it is not yet clear how the Omani pilot would have obtained clearance to fly to Israel.
The suspected pilot had been removed from a previous job at Oman Air, the country’s national airline last year following concerns about his extremist views, sources familiar with the matter told CNN.
A regional diplomatic source told CNN the suspect was removed from flight training because of concerns that he had radical views and was given another role at the airline.
The pilot is an Omani citizen born in the UAE to an Omani father and Syrian mother and has spent several years of his life in the UAE, another source added.
An Israeli official told CNN the suspect had worked for Flydubai for only eight months. A third source said the alleged assailant had previously worked for Royal Air Maroc, Morocco’s national carrier.
CNN has reached out to Oman Air and the Dubai government’s media office for comment.
In a statement to AP, Air Maroc said the suspect trained with the airline for three months in 2025 as part of the pre-employment process but he was not selected.
Where are the passengers now?
The passengers, who Netanyahu said were “almost all” Israeli, have since traveled to Israel on a substitute Flydubai plane that was sent to Saudi Arabia.
Prior to their arrival at Israel’s Ben Gurion airport, the families of passengers anxiously waited for their loved ones, with some carrying balloons reading “welcome” and “it’s so good to have you back home.”
After landing in Israel, Flydubai passengers were directed to a “dedicated reception area” where they met with medical teams and underwent examinations, an Israel Airports Authority spokesperson said.
A 50-year-old male passenger was taken to hospital with an upper-body injury and is in “light condition,” according to the spokesperson.
Four American citizens who also hold Israeli nationality were among the passengers on board, according to two US officials. There were also two Australian passengers, according to Australia’s Foreign Affairs Minister Penny Wong.
Israeli carrier Arkia operated a special flight on Friday evening to bring stranded Israeli nationals in Dubai back to Israel, according to an airline spokesperson, after Flydubai temporarily suspended flights on the route following the apparent attempted hijacking. A second flight is expected to take place over the weekend.
What will the investigation look like?
Authorities continue to unpack the details around the harrowing incident, many of which remain murky.
A host of Israeli agencies, including Shin Bet, Mossad, the military and the country’s transportation ministry, are involved in the investigation, an Israeli official told CNN.
One of the main questions being looked into is why the flight crew included a pilot from a country with which Israel does not have diplomatic relations, the official said.
Israel enforces some of the strictest aviation security protocols in the world, after facing a history of hijackings and terminal attacks. Departing passengers are required to undergo pre-screening and questioning, in addition to multiple passport checks, advanced baggage scanning, and, sometimes, full-body screening.
Foreign airlines must obtain approval from Israel’s Aviation Security Operation Center before they can operate to and from the country’s airports.
An Israeli security official told CNN that Israel’s internal security agency, Shin Bet, is also supposed to vet all airlines’ personnel flying into Israel from the UAE.
In a statement on X, Anwar Gargash, senior advisor to the UAE’s president said that “the region’s struggle with extremism persists, and justifying terrorism through hate speech is part of the danger, not its margins. The latest terrorist operation is a new warning that the confrontation has not ended.”
He added that the UAE’s response showed the country had “no tolerance for extremism and no leniency toward its discourse.”
Investigators will likely explore the flight data recorder and cockpit voice recorder first, Marco Chan, a senior lecturer in aviation operations at London’s Kingston University, told CNN.
They will also interview the crew, the off-duty pilots and passengers, and determine how the cockpit door was opened, and the pilot’s medical and training history, he said.
CNN’s Catherine Nicholls, Ivana Kottasová, Zeena Saifi, Dana Karni, Michael Rios, Hira Humayun, Jeremy Diamond, Adam Cancryn, Eyad Kourdi, Sophie Tanno, Billy Stockwell, Ayushi Shah, Eugenia Yosef, Abbas Al Lawati, Kylie Atwood and Lauren Said-Moorhouse contributed to this report.
