An international jet flying from Dubai to Tel Aviv has been forced into an emergency landing amid reports of a bloody hijacking attempt that has left two crew members hospitalised.
The captain of the Flydubai flight, which was carrying 174 passengers and crew, was reportedly stabbed by his copilot in an attempt to take control of the jet and crash it into the ground.
Reports, videos and images of the chaotic scenes on board FZ1073 have begun to emerge with reports of a “violent” fight between the two pilots.
Israeli media are reporting that the co-pilot on board was trying to take control of the Boeing 737 Max in order to plunge the aircraft to the ground in a murder-suicide attempt.
The Sun reported that one passenger told Israel’s Channel 12: “We heard screams on the plane. Then they opened the cockpit and we saw blood, and someone had stabbed the pilot with a pocketknife.”
She said that passengers and crew members stormed the cockpit to bring the alleged assailant under control.
Another woman named Noam told Israel’s Channel 12 news outlet: “Screams began on the plane… by passengers who realised what was happening.
“We understand that one of the pilots was stabbed and seriously wounded, and they lost control of the plane. It started to dive quickly. It was very scary.”
Other witnesses described violent scenes with multiple passengers reportedly “covered in blood”.
In a video purportedly of an Israeli passenger on board the FlyDubai flight and carried widely by Israeli media, the passenger said one of pilots was seriously injured and the other was slightly injured, after one of the pilots was stabbed.
The Israeli Air Force prepared fighter jets while a major security warning was issued due to the assumption of a hijacking.
One Israeli official told local news outlets: “At this stage, it is still unclear what the pilot’s ultimate goal was – whether to hijack the plane, land it in Israel, crash it into the ground, or carry out a September 11-style attack, but Israel estimates that his intention was to take control of the plane.”
The Boeing, which left Dubai at 7am, local time, sent out a “squawk code” around 90 minutes into the flight, according to tracking data.
The international emergency alert was followed by a 7500 code, meaning a hijacking or unlawful interference, as it entered Jordanian air space.
However, the emergency signal from the aircraft was later established to have been triggered by violence between two pilots in the cockpit.
The plane was diverted under Israeli fighter jet escorts to Tabuk, Saudi Arabia as it descended to a lower altitude before landing with everyone on board safe.
The aircraft’s captain and the co-pilot were injured and taken to the hospital, according to a statement from the Prince Sultan bin Abdulaziz International Airport in Tabuk carried by the Saudi state-run Alekhbariya television.
The co-pilot is at the centre of an investigation by Saudi authorities amid reports that he stabbed the captain. Mental health issues are also being pursued in the investigation.
The flight abruptly descended from 33,000 feet to 17,000 feet (around 10,000 metres to 5,100 metres) in about the space of a minute, before making an erratic circle close to the Jordanian border and eventually landing in Tabuk about an hour later, according to Flightradar24.
It was also claimed that the jet sped up from 411 knots to 600 as it climbed to over 21,500 feet.
It is believed Israeli authorities are still treating the incident as a terror event.
Yasmin Abukasis said her daughter Miriam, who was among the passengers on the flight, had told her that she had heard screaming and that a man holding a knife had forced one of the pilots onto the floor, and that there was blood everywhere.
Israeli media published a photo purportedly taken from inside the plane, which appeared to show a passenger’s blood-soaked shirt.
FlyDubai confirmed that flight FZ 1073 en route to Ben Gurion Airport experienced an incident and landed in Tabuk on Wednesday.
“Our teams are working closely with the relevant authorities,” the carrier said.
Israeli media, citing security officials, said the incident stemmed from a feud between the pilots, although the history between the pair was not divulged.
“The crew have been questioned as part of the investigation,” a regional official added but did not say if anyone had been detained.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has warned in recent days of unspecified, escalated security threats. The country is days away from marking the anniversary of the October 7, 2023, attack on southern Israel, weeks away from an election, and has been embroiled in multiple conflicts in the last three years.
Netanyahu’s office said the situation was under control and Israel was working to bring the passengers home.
Israelis were targeted in a string of hijackings and airplane attacks by Palestinian militants in the 1960s and 1970s. Israel has not experienced a hijacking in decades but maintains some of the strictest airport security in the world, including on Israel-bound flights.
The emergency landing in Saudi Arabia was not the first for a plane carrying Israelis home. The kingdom does not have formal diplomatic ties with Israel, but ended its longstanding ban on Israeli flights overflying its territory in 2022. Since then, Saudi Arabia has coordinated multiple emergency landings for Israeli passengers, including in 2023 when a plane experienced an electrical malfunction.
The UAE has become a popular vacation destination for Israeli tourists since the countries normalized ties in 2020. FlyDubai is the lower-cost sister carrier of Emirates airlines.
with AAP
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