The co-pilot of a flight from Dubai to Tel Aviv tried to crash the plane after stabbing the pilot, but passengers then held him down while other pilots landed the plane safely in Saudi Arabia, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said on Wednesday.
Describing the event as “a highly severe security incident,” Netanyahu said Saudi authorities would interrogate the co-pilot of flydubai flight FZ1073 from the United Arab Emirates to Israel.
The alleged assailant, who an Israeli official identified as an Omani national, was arrested after the plane landed, Netanyahu said.
“All passengers are out of harm’s way,” Netanyahu, who described the passengers as being almost all Israeli, said in a video statement released by his office.
The Israeli leader quoted a passenger as saying that passengers along with a member of the crew broke into the cockpit after the aircraft “entered a tailspin and began to dive” and found the co-pilot “trying to sabotage the plane’s systems.”
“They saved many lives. They prevented a heavy disaster,” he said.
An Israeli official had earlier told Reuters the plane transmitted emergency signals.
The aircraft’s data appeared to show that it had suddenly and rapidly descended by nearly 14,000 feet in less than 30 seconds before a first emergency signal was sent, according to flight-tracking website Flightradar24.
Around the time the plane landed in Saudi Arabia, Doron Spielman, a spokesperson for the Israeli prime minister’s office, told Reuters the incident was not believed to have been a hijacking, describing it as a “different incident”.
The Israeli officials, speaking on the condition of anonymity to brief reporters, said Israel’s current assessment is that the incident was an attempted “terror attack” and not related to any kind of mental health issue with either of the pilots.
