Israel-bound jet plummets 17,000 feet before landing in Saudi Arabia after apparent pilot fight - USA Today
A commercial passenger jet bound for Tel Aviv from Dubai plummeted more than 17,000 feet for more than a minute and then made an emergency landing in Saudi Arabia after a fight broke out between the co-pilots as part of an attempted "sabotage," according to the airline, officials and reports in Israeli media.
Details of the incident are still emerging, but all the passengers on the flight are safe and accounted for, according to FlyDubai, the airline, and the office of Israel's Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
A spokesperson for Netanyahu initially said the incident was not believed to have been a hijacking. However, Israel's leader later confirmed there was a violent struggle in the cockpit between the pilots, and Israeli officials have begun raising the possibility of an intended terrorist attack.
In a subsequent statement, Netanyahu said "one of the pilots stabbed the other pilot and, apparently, tried to crash the plane with its passengers on the plane."
Still, the attacker's motivations were not immediately clear and Netanyahu stopped short of calling it a terror attack. He said the pilot was "attempting to sabotage the aircraft's systems." Israel's defense minister, Israel Katz, nevertheless described the incident as an "attempted jihadist terror attack." He did not elaborate.
The pilot who did the stabbing is being questioned by Saudi authorities.
And several bone-chilling accounts of the episode from passengers have been published in Israel.
Yasmin Abukasis, whose daughter Miriam was on the flight, said her daughter told her she heard screaming, saw a man pull out a knife and force one of the pilots to the floor, with blood everywhere, the Times of Israel reported.
"It's a crazy, crazy time, it's very hard to explain what happened there," she said.
Other passengers described helping to subdue one of the pilots, both of whom suffered injuries.
Authorities have not confirmed those specific accounts and USA TODAY could not immediately verify them.
Israel's controversial, hard-right National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir described the unusual and dramatic incident as a terrorist attack, though Israeli investigators have also not confirmed that description.
The FlyDubai plane departed from the United Arab Emirates' city-state early on Sept. 30. It signaled it was experiencing an onboard security incident two hours into the flight, according to Flightradar24, a tracking website.
The jet then underwent what Flightradar24 described as "extreme fluctuations in the transmitted altitude data." It descended more than 17,000 feet in less than two minutes, when it changed its so-called emergency squawk code to "7500." That number is used by pilots to indicate an unlawful interference or hijacking on a plane.
Neither FlyDubai nor Israeli and Emirati officials responded to requests for more information about the incident.
Direct commercial flights between Israel and Dubai only started in 2020 following the normalization of relations between the two countries as part of the Trump administration-brokered Abraham Accords. That agreement is a series of regional economic agreements involving Israel and various Gulf states.
An Israeli official told the Times of Israel that a "major disaster had been averted."
The incident comes ahead of a tightly contested election in Israel.
On Sept. 30, Netanyahu posted a video message saying that the country's enemies could attempt to launch an attack on Israel ahead of that. It also comes ahead of the third anniversary of the Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas attacks on Israel that sparked Israel's full-scale Gaza invasion.
This story has been updated to add new information.
Kim Hjelmgaard is an investigative journalist covering global stories for USA TODAY, from living rooms to conflict zones. He is based in London.
