• Indian pilot stabbed by Omani colleague

A potentially catastrophic disaster was averted aboard a Dubai-to-Tel Aviv flight after passengers and off-duty pilots intervened to subdue a pilot who had stabbed his colleague and appeared to be attempting to disable or crash the aircraft, leaving more than 150 people facing what passengers described as a terrifying fight for survival.

Oracle Intelligence gathered that Flydubai flight FZ1073 was carrying at least 150 people, most of them Israelis, when the crisis unfolded over Saudi Arabia on Wednesday. Flight-tracking data showed the aircraft plunged more than 17,000 feet in less than two minutes, before declaring an emergency and later transmitting a hijacking code.

Passengers said the ordeal began when one pilot attacked the other in the cockpit. Israeli passenger Yaniv Hayun recalled that he realised something was seriously wrong when the aircraft suddenly dropped.

“Someone screamed… the light went out,” Hayun said in an account released by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s office.

The aircraft had been flying from Dubai International Airport to Ben-Gurion Airport in Israel when it began its dramatic descent approximately two and a half hours after take-off. According to flight-tracking data, the aircraft lost more than 17,000 feet in under two minutes at about 05:21 local time before broadcasting an emergency code and subsequently a hijacking signal.

As passengers struggled to understand what was happening, Hayun and others moved towards the cockpit. The injured pilot, who had been stabbed and was close to the cockpit door, managed to open it before collapsing.

Hayun said he entered the cockpit with another passenger and found one pilot incapacitated while the attacker was positioned between the two seats and apparently attempting to destroy the aircraft’s instruments.

“When I entered the cockpit, I saw one pilot down and the attacker on the instruments,” Hayun recounted, saying the man appeared to be “trying to destroy the instruments in order to…disable the plane.”

Hayun then physically restrained the attacker, pulling him away from the cockpit controls. Other passengers rushed forward to help overpower and secure him.

“I grabbed the attacker, put him in a chokehold, and pulled him — first and foremost — outside,” he said.

The passengers subsequently restrained the attacker using improvised means. Another passenger, Zvika Meness, told Israeli public broadcaster Kan that he and two others tied the man up with his own zip ties and multimedia headphones.

With the immediate threat inside the cockpit contained, another extraordinary intervention unfolded. Hayun moved to the controls and attempted to stabilise the aircraft until pilots who had been travelling as passengers reached the flight deck.

“I started pulling the controls,” Hayun said.

Asked by Netanyahu whether he knew how to operate an aircraft, Hayun replied: “I watch Air Crash Investigation, Mr Prime Minister.”

He said the aircraft began to level out before one of the on-duty pilots who had been in the passenger cabin reached the cockpit and took control.

The airline subsequently confirmed that on-duty Flydubai crew members travelling on the flight intervened, secured the aircraft and diverted it to Tabuk in northwestern Saudi Arabia, where it landed safely.

The aircraft touched down at Tabuk Airport at 06:58, according to location data. The passengers were subsequently transferred to another aircraft and flown to Tel Aviv, arriving at Ben-Gurion Airport later that day.

For those aboard, however, the emergency was measured not in flight-tracking data but in the fear that their aircraft was falling out of control.

“Thank God I’m alive,” passenger Haim Lazarovich told journalists, describing the loss of control as the most terrifying moment of the flight.

Eighteen-year-old passenger Oran Choen said the episode felt interminable as passengers confronted the possibility that they were about to die.

“Maybe it was five minutes, but it feels like hell,” he said, recalling hearing his brother scream that they were going to die.

Yasmin Abukasis, whose daughter was aboard, said her daughter described seeing a man with a knife forcing one of the pilots onto the floor, with blood throughout the cockpit area. She said the aircraft began losing control as passengers panicked and ran towards the attacker.

Another passenger described the moment the cabin realised the pilots had apparently lost control of the aircraft.

“We understood the pilots lost control,” she told Israel Hayom, adding that passengers were later left with shirts covered in blood.

At the centre of the rescue was the injured pilot, Indian national Captain Smit Machchhar, who survived the stabbing and was taken to hospital after the emergency landing. The Indian embassy in Saudi Arabia said he was in stable condition.

Netanyahu hailed Machchhar as a “true hero”, saying his actions helped save the lives of 174 people, including Israelis and other nationals. Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi also praised the captain, saying his valour helped avert a major tragedy.

The passenger intervention was equally critical. Netanyahu praised Hayun and the other passengers who confronted the attacker, describing them as heroes whose resourcefulness and courage prevented a major disaster.

The attacker was arrested after the aircraft landed and was being questioned by Saudi authorities. Israeli Defence Minister Israel Katz described the episode as an “attempted jihadist terror attack”, although the available report says investigators had not established an official motive. The BBC had not received official statements from police, emergency services or investigators confirming the motive.

U.S. President Donald Trump, who said he spoke with Netanyahu after the incident, said the attacker appeared to be “perhaps a terrorist” but also noted that there could be other explanations for the attack.

The episode therefore remains under investigation, but the sequence of events aboard FZ1073 is clear: a pilot was stabbed, the aircraft entered a steep descent, passengers confronted the attacker, an injured captain managed to open the cockpit door, passengers restrained the assailant, and off-duty pilots travelling in the cabin ultimately took control and landed the aircraft safely.

What began as an apparently uncontrollable descent over Saudi Arabia ended with all those aboard evacuated from the aircraft and later returned to Israel — after passengers and crew members intervened at a moment when, by their own accounts, many believed they were about to die.