Copilot stabs captain on flight to Israel before passengers storm cockpit and stabilize jetliner

TEL AVIV, Israel (AP) — A copilot stabbed a captain Wednesday on a flight to Israel before passengers burst into the cockpit and wrestled with the attacker as the plane descended sharply and passengers screamed, witnesses said. The jetliner was stabilized and made an emergency landing in Saudi Arabia.

It was not clear what motivated the attack, which led Israel to scramble warplanes amid concerns about a possible hijacking. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Saudi Arabia arrested the copilot, who was not identified.

The shaken passengers from the FlyDubai flight from Dubai to Tel Aviv landed Wednesday evening in Israel on another flight, as onlookers cheered.

“We’re going to die,” passenger Naama Bershadski recalled thinking as she closed her eyes and prayed for a good ending.

Aviation experts were surprised that the plane did not crash after a descent so extreme that most of the rudder was ripped off the tail.

A video shared by Netanyahu’s office showed passenger Yaniv Hayoun, who grappled with the attacker, wearing a bloodied shirt and hugging the prime minister, who told him: “I look at you and I see a lion. I see a great hero.”

Responders knew they had seconds to act

After a passenger saw one pilot stab the other and called out for help, Yaniv said, he and others pushed their way into the cockpit, where he saw the copilot apparently trying to destroy the controls, Israeli broadcaster Channel 12 reported.

“The door apparently wasn’t locked, and we managed to open it somehow,” Hayoun told journalists. “What made it difficult for us was the (other) pilot himself. He had been stabbed and was on the other side of the door.”

As people wrestled with the attacker, Yaniv said he grabbed the controls and pulled them the way he had seen on television. Then other crew members took over. FlyDubai said the aircraft was secured by on-duty crew “who diverted and landed the aircraft safely.”

Another passenger in the scrum, Tzvika Manes, told Channel 12 it took many minutes to subdue the attacker.

A third responder, dentist Shota Musayev, told journalists the passengers realized they had just seconds to take control of the plane before a “critical event.” They also feared another attacker might be on the plane, so “we spread a few more people inside the plane so that if something happened, we would be able to simply take control.”

Musayev then attended to the wounded captain: “He was just praying the whole time and was in contact with me, and I was afraid we would really lose him.”

Netanyahu identified the Indian captain as Smit Machchhar and noted his “extraordinary bravery.” The Indian Embassy in Saudi Arabia said Machchhar was in stable condition.

“Despite being stabbed and seriously 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 on X. “He saved the lives of 174 people, including Israeli citizens and other nationals.”

When the struggle was over, video footage on social media reviewed by The Associated Press showed two men on the plane’s floor, bloodied and wounded. The captain and first officer were injured, according to a statement by Prince Sultan bin Abdulaziz International Airport in Tabuk, where the plane landed at 9:45 a.m., an hour after making a distress call.

Among the passengers who intervened were members of the Israeli security forces and air marshals, according to a person familiar with a probe by Saudi Arabia and regional partners. The person was not authorized to comment publicly and spoke on condition of anonymity.

Netanyahu had warned in recent days of unspecified, heightened security threats. The country is a week away from the anniversary of the Hamas-led Oct. 7, 2023, attack on Israel, which has triggered a series of wars, and is weeks away from an election.

Aviation experts marvel that the plane didn’t crash

In the chaos about two and a half hours after leaving Dubai, the flight descended from 33,000 feet to 17,000 feet (around 10,000 meters to 5,100 meters) in about a minute, before making an erratic circle close to the Jordanian border and landing in Tabuk about an hour later, according to Flightradar24, which identified the aircraft as a Boeing 737 Max 8.

“Suddenly the aircraft started to fall down, like, a massive turbulence, like a massive G-force, for 20 or 30 seconds,” passenger Almog Italie said.

Former United Airlines pilot and aviation safety expert Steve Arroyo said he was surprised that the plane was able to land safely after most of the rudder was ripped off the tail during the extreme descent.

“That was a serious descent and strong aerodynamic forces on that rudder for that to happen. I’m just amazed the aircraft didn’t come apart,” Arroyo said.

Another aviation safety expert, Jeff Guzzetti, said that given the rate of descent, it may not have been possible for the plane to level out if it had fallen below 10,000 feet.

“It is remarkable they were able to pull out of that dive. What saved them is there was enough altitude left for them to recover,” said Guzzetti, who used to investigate crashes for the National Transportation Safety Board and the Federal Aviation Administration in the U.S.

Crew made a panicked mayday call while seeking a place to land

A person who heard the flight’s communications with air traffic control described the plane being turned away by Saudi Arabia and Jordan before eventually landing in Tabuk, while passengers screamed in the background.

The person said the pilot’s voice was trembling as he called “mayday” and said a hijacking was taking place and ambulances would be needed. But Saudi Arabia initially denied clearance to land and directed him to Jordan. The plane was told to wait for clearance from the Jordanian military and then turned away.

The pilot then returned to Saudi Arabia and said he had to land in Tabuk. The air traffic control operators gave no reason for the earlier refusals. The person who heard the communications spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak to the media.

Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates had released little information as of late Wednesday. FlyDubai, the lower-cost sister carrier of Emirates airlines, said its flights to and from Israel would be suspended while an investigation takes place.

Israeli Foreign Minister Gideon Saar said he spoke with his counterpart in the UAE and they agreed to work together “against extremist elements seeking to harm security and undermine stability in the region.” The general Civil Aviation Authority of the UAE said it was investigating a security incident. Saudi authorities said they had also launched an investigation.

An official confirmed that Israel had scrambled warplanes, fearing a hijacking. The official spoke on condition of anonymity because the incident was under investigation.

Israeli passengers have made emergency landings in Saudi Arabia before

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 it ended its longstanding ban on Israeli flights overflying its territory in 2022.

Since then, Saudi Arabia has coordinated 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.