It was 8:45 a.m. (Paris time) at Tabuk airport, in north-west Saudi Arabia, when the plane finally landed safely. On the plane, the 174 passengers applaud and sing, relieved. Flight FZ1073, from Dubai to Tel Aviv, has just avoided a “disaster that could have been of global magnitude”, in the words used on Fox News by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
The FlyDubai plane took off without problem around 5 a.m. from Dubai towards Ben Gurion airport in Tel Aviv. But at 7:21 a.m., the aircraft suddenly lost altitude, going from nearly 34,000 feet to 17,000 feet in less than a minute, according to data from the Flightradar site. It drops more than 5,000 meters, a fall that causes panic among the passengers.
“We’re killing people here!”
On board, a passenger goes to the business class toilet and hears screams at the front of the plane. The cockpit door opens and the woman sees blood. "She saw the stab wounds and started screaming: 'We're killing people here!'" Naomi told the Israeli newspaper Haaretz. “Later we understood that she had saved us, because it was thanks to her that the men stood up.”
“We heard screams in the plane. Afterwards, they opened the cockpit and we saw blood, and that someone had stabbed the pilot with a pocket knife,” confirms a passenger on the flight in a written message to the Keshet 12 channel. The rapid reaction of four passengers then proved decisive. We “entered the cockpit and neutralized the terrorist,” Zvika Mans, one of the protagonists, told the Israeli newspaper TheMarker.
Opening the cockpit proved difficult, because the door was blocked by the body of Commander Smit Machchhar, the Indian pilot who was lying injured, according to the account given by a passenger, Yaniv Hayoun. “Upon entering, I saw the attacker at the dashboard, between the two seats. One pilot was on the ground and the other was near the instruments,” he told Benjamin Netanyahu. According to him, the attacker tried to damage the instruments of the device.
He claims to have then grabbed the attacker by creating a chokehold to remove him from the cockpit. The Israeli Prime Minister also congratulated this Israeli plumber, explaining that he had “caught [the assailant] from behind, pulled back”. Then he "sat in the pilot's seat" and "pulled the control stick back." The head of government evokes “an incredible act of heroism” on the part of all the people who intervened. Israeli President Isaac Herzog also announced his intention to award one of the country's highest civilian distinctions to the four Israeli passengers involved.
British pilots on board
After the injured pilot was discovered, the passengers restrained the co-pilot using cable ties, according to testimonies. Everything happens very quickly: while a doctor takes care of the victim, two other passengers, British pilots present on board, will stabilize the aircraft. "I have to mention James - if I'm not mistaken - who took the controls and managed to stabilize the plane," Assaf Rajwan, one of the passengers who helped regain control of the plane, told Haaretz.
"The plane lost control and started to nose down; fortunately the right people were there at the right time."
Assaf Rajwan, passenger on the flight
to the newspaper "Haaretz"
“The plane was really on the verge of crashing and it is only thanks (...) to all those who controlled the co-pilot” that the worst was avoided, described from Tabuk Miriam Shira Ohayon, present on board. The pilot and co-pilot were injured and were hospitalized, report Tabuk airport authorities. The passengers “are safe and sound”, according to the FlyDubai company.
The testimonies do not make it possible to establish precisely what happened in the cockpit between the Indian pilot and the co-pilot. The latter is an Omani national, according to The Times of Israel. The reasons for the altercation are currently “unknown,” FlyDubai said in a statement. The United Arab Emirates justice system announces the opening of an investigation, while the Saudi authorities are currently questioning the incriminated co-pilot.
