{"id":911305,"date":"2026-09-30T18:40:13","date_gmt":"2026-09-30T18:40:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/911305\/"},"modified":"2026-09-30T18:40:13","modified_gmt":"2026-09-30T18:40:13","slug":"israel-to-ramp-up-aviation-security-after-pm-says-flydubai-pilot-stabbed-colleague-and-tried-to-crash-plane-bound-for-tel-aviv","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/911305\/","title":{"rendered":"Israel to ‘ramp up’ aviation security after PM says flydubai pilot stabbed colleague and ‘tried to crash plane’ bound for Tel Aviv"},"content":{"rendered":"

Israel’s Prime Minister says a commercial flight with 174 people on board bound for Tel Aviv had to divert to Saudi Arabia after one pilot stabbed the other and “apparently tried to crash the plane”.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Warning: This article contains graphic images.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The Boeing 737 operated by flydubai \u2014 a sister airline of Emirates \u2014 took off from Dubai International Airport in the United Arab Emirates on Wednesday morning, local time.<\/p>\n

Tabuk Airport, in north-west Saudi Arabia, said its air-traffic control received a distress call from the flight FZ1073 at 8:44am (3:44pm AEST). It landed there safely around an hour later.<\/p>\n

The vast majority of the passengers were Israeli and authorities there are treating the emergency as a terror attack.<\/p>\n

In a video address released by his office on Wednesday, Israel’s PM Benjamin Netanyahu made several startling claims about what he described as a “highly severe security incident”. He said:<\/p>\n

One pilot had stabbed the other and attempted to crash the plane.The flight entered a “tailspin”, which prompted passengers to break into the cockpit with a member of the crew.Once inside, the group found a co-pilot “trying to sabotage the plane’s systems”.The plane only landed safely because other people took control.<\/p>\n

Almost all the passengers on the flight were Israeli, Mr Netanyahu said, before praising the group that intervened at the front of the plane.<\/p>\n

“They saved many lives,” he said. “They prevented a heavy disaster.”<\/p>\n

The PM also claimed Saudi officials had arrested one of the pilots.<\/p>\n

Citing local security sources, Israeli media outlets and Reuters said the incident was being treated as a terror attack.<\/p>\n

Authorities would “ramp up” flight security on Israeli and non-Israeli carriers, Mr Netanyahu’s spokesman later added.\u00a0<\/p>\n

According to the website Flightradar24, the flydubai plane plunged about 4,000 metres in less than 30 seconds at one point during its journey.<\/p>\n

Some of the details from Mr Netanyahu’s video were corroborated by a flydubai spokesperson, who said an “altercation had occurred” on the flightdeck of FZ1073.<\/p>\n

“At this early stage, the underlying reasons and motives behind this event are unknown and remain subject to a formal investigation,” they said.<\/p>\n

\"Two<\/p>\n

There were scenes of jubilation at Tel Aviv’s main airport as passengers aboard the diverted flydubai flight arrived back. (Reuters: Ammar Awad)<\/p>\n

Passengers who were on board the diverted flight later arrived back into Tel Aviv’s Ben Gurion airport where they were greeted by friends and family.<\/p>\n

One of the passengers aboard the flight was later pictured with Mr Netanyahu. The prime minister’s office released images of the meeting on X, saying the passenger had helped burst into the cockpit during the incident.<\/p>\n

Mr Netanyahu has also warned people could try to attack his country ahead of the elections, which are due to be held next month.<\/p>\n

‘We jumped and helped the pilot’<\/p>\n

Verified images from inside the flight showed men covered in blood.<\/p>\n

One of the passengers on board, Itzhak Liber, posted a video to social media shortly before the plane landed, in which he said: “We are here on the plane, there was a crazy man with a knife who stabbed one of the pilots.<\/p>\n

\"A<\/p>\n

This passenger on the flight filmed himself asking for help and posted the video on social media. (Reuters\/Social media)<\/p>\n

“We jumped and helped the pilot. Friends, everything is OK now, as you can see we are landing in Saudi Arabia, you can see I am fine. That’s it. We will see in a few minutes what will happen when we land.”<\/p>\n

Another man on the flight said in a video posted online: “We control the flight, we controlled the terrorists. Anyone who can hear me, we need help.”<\/p>\n

A third passenger posted on social media that he saw a “riot” at the front of the plane and that a third pilot onboard “managed to take control of the aircraft, and take us south to Saudi Arabia”.<\/p>\n

Israel Katz, the country’s defence minister, on Wednesday described the incident as “a jihadist terror attempt” which was “thwarted only thanks to the bravery of several Israeli passengers who broke into the cockpit”.<\/p>\n

\"A<\/p>\n

Passengers gather around an injured man on the flight from Dubai to Tel Aviv. (Reuters\/Social media)<\/p>\n

Transporting the passengers from Tabuk to Tel Aviv has been complicated by the fact Saudi Arabia and Israel do not have formal diplomatic relations.<\/p>\n

An Israeli request to send a plane to pick up the passengers was rejected. Flydubai said it had sent two planes to Tabuk later on Wednesday to pick up the stranded people.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Israel’s Prime Minister says a commercial flight with 174 people on board bound for Tel Aviv had to…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":911306,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[478933,43,6897,44,41,39,42,40],"class_list":["post-911305","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-headlines","tag-flydubai","tag-headlines","tag-israel","tag-news","tag-top-news","tag-top-stories","tag-topnews","tag-topstories"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/911305","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=911305"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/911305\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/911306"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=911305"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=911305"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=911305"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}