A flydubai flight just survived an attempted hijacking over Saudi Arabia
1 day ago · 30 September 2026Share
A Flydubai Boeing 737-8 MAX aircraft pauses at Kraków John Paul II International Airport in Poland. File photo. Bahnfrend · CC BY-SA 4.0
Israel now believes a Flydubai co-pilot deliberately stabbed his captain mid-flight.
Security officials there are calling it an attempted terror attack. Not a fight between pilots. An attack.
Here's what happened. Flydubai flight FZ1073 left Dubai this morning, headed for Ben Gurion Airport in Tel Aviv. About 90 minutes in, the plane sent out a general emergency code. Then it sent a second code. That second one means hijacking.
So what happened next? The plane dropped, fast, then turned away from Israel and landed safely in Tabuk, in northwestern Saudi Arabia.
How steep was that drop? Nobody agrees. Some reports say around 4,000 metres. Others say more than 17,000 feet in about two minutes. Others say nearly 14,000 feet in under 30 seconds. Those numbers don't match, and none of them is confirmed.
Two Israeli officials told Reuters the co-pilot stabbed the captain, before cabin crew got into the cockpit and took control of the plane. Both pilots were hurt and taken to hospital once the plane landed, according to Tabuk airport.
A passenger called Miriam was on board. She told her mother she heard screaming, saw a man holding a knife, and saw the pilot on the floor with blood on him. She later told Channel 12 television, says quote "we just heard screams, and the cockpit door opened and we saw a huge amount of blood".
In the hours since, Israel's security establishment has hardened its view. The IDF, Mossad and Shin Bet — Israel's internal security service — now believe this was a suspected act of terror, not a violent argument. A senior Israeli official told the Jerusalem Post, says quote "a major disaster was narrowly avoided".
So who did this? Israeli sources believe the suspected attacker is Omani. Earlier reports said something completely different — a Russian captain and a Ukrainian first officer. Those reports have since been dropped. Some later reports instead say the captain is Emirati. Flydubai has not confirmed either pilot's nationality.
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Contains modified NASA Earth Science and Remote Sensing Unit data showing Saudi Arabia including the Tabuk region where the incident occurred. Earth Science and Remote Sensing Unit, NASA Johnson Space Center · Public domain
And here's the twist. A Transportation Ministry source told the Jerusalem Post that Flydubai's deal to fly into Ben Gurion Airport requires pilots from countries that have normalised relations with Israel. Oman does not have normalised relations with Israel. Israel's Transportation Minister, Miri Regev, has now asked Shin Bet to halt all Flydubai flights into and out of the country.
Israel's Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, called a security meeting with his defence officials. Israel's Defence Minister, Israel Katz, was there too. The IDF's Chief of Staff, Lieutenant General Eyal Zamir, held his own assessment with senior officers. The Jerusalem Post reports, on one source, that Zamir cancelled a trip to the United States, where he was due to meet America's top general and the admiral who runs Central Command.
Israel's air force scrambled fighter jets the moment those emergency codes came through.
But not every Israeli official jumped straight to terror. Doron Spielman, who speaks for the Prime Minister's office, first told Reuters this was not believed to be a hijacking, and called it a different incident. That early caution has since been overtaken by the harder line from the IDF, Mossad and Shin Bet.
Flydubai itself has said very little. Just that the flight experienced an incident, landed safely at Tabuk, and everyone on board is safe and accounted for. It says it's sending a replacement plane to Tabuk to fly the passengers on to Tel Aviv. The UAE, which owns Flydubai, has not commented at all. Saudi Arabia has only confirmed the plane landed there. Israel and Saudi Arabia have no diplomatic relations.
And here's why this flight exists at all. It only runs because Israel and the UAE normalised relations back in 2020.
No group has said it was behind this. There's no sign yet that a foreign state or organisation was involved. Nobody has said why the co-pilot is thought to have done this.
Even how many people were on board is unclear. Reports range from about 150 to 180 passengers, with one figure putting it at 174, including 27 children.
Investigators in Saudi Arabia, the UAE and Israel are now going through the flight recorders, the cockpit voice recordings and passenger statements. So the two big questions are still open. Why the co-pilot is thought to have done this. And whether anyone told him to.
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