JERUSALEM, Israel – They boarded a routine flight to Israel and landed with new heroes among them. Now, as passengers from FlyDubai flight 1073 describe their miraculous survival, Israeli authorities are digging deeper into what may have been behind the attempted hijacking of the jet.
As Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu embraced and welcomed FlyDubai passenger Yaniv Hayoun on Thursday morning, the Israeli citizen, a plumber by trade, told him, “We are a nation of lions, aren’t we?”
It took that kind of courage to survive Wednesday’s ordeal aboard flight 1073.
The plane was carrying 174 people from Dubai to Tel Aviv when Israeli officials say the Omani co-pilot stabbed the captain and apparently tried to crash the aircraft.
The jet plunged nearly 14 thousand feet in less than 30 seconds. Hayoun and other passengers forced their way into the cockpit and overpowered the attacker..
“Thank God, we pulled it off. We really put our heads together and worked as a team,” Hayoun recalled.
He says he put the co-pilot in a chokehold and dragged him away from the controls, then pulled back on them himself as the plane nosedived.
He indicated that he knew something about what to do from watching aviation disaster programs on television.
President Trump called the Omani co-pilot a possible terrorist and said that Netanyahu phoned him with the incredible story.
“And never having flown a plane, he took the stick, lifted it up, and leveled out the plane before it crashed,” he said.
The president added, “And he learned from watching that show, sort of how to fly. You tell me. This is the craziest thing.”
Trump calls it crazy. Fellow passenger Almog Italie calls it a miracle.
“It’s a big miracle, but made of small miracles,” he specified to CBN News White House Correspondent Kelly Wright.
Italie explained, “We were thinking all the times of actions – what we can do. No time to think about any other things but to take actions.”
Those actions, coupled with one of those “small miracles,” may have saved the life of the captain, an Indian national, who was seriously wounded, and his being hailed as a hero for his actions.
The prime minister revealed that the bloodied captain somehow managed to release the locked cockpit door, allowing passengers to get inside and stop the attack.
Two other FlyDubai pilots traveling aboard the plane then took control, landing safely in Saudi Arabia.
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As details of the incident become clear, the question now is: why did it happen? Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz calls it an “attempted jihadist terror attack.”
Israeli security officials are investigating whether the Omani co-pilot intended to crash the plane in a 9/11-style attack, and whether he acted alone.
The investigation also comes amid heightened threats to aviation across the region.
Just days before the FlyDubai incident, a top Iranian security official threatened airports in neighboring countries cooperating with U.S. sanctions, warning they would “no longer be able to operate flights.”
In the UK, Prime Minister Andy Burnham suggested there are “strong indications” that Iran is linked to a potential terror attack earlier this week on a base used by the US military.
FlyDubai says the motive remains unknown, and it has temporarily suspended flights to and from Israel. The United Arab Emirates has opened an investigation into whether the co-pilot had a terror motive and planned the attack in advance.
Investigators may eventually determine why the plane almost fell from the sky, but for the passengers who sang with joy after they began their flight home to Israel, there is already a word for how it ended: a midair miracle.
