Then, a few minutes after that 7500 code went out, the pilot signalled the plane was heading back toward Israel. It changed direction again.
How many people are on board? Reports don't agree. Somewhere between just over 100 and 174 passengers, including 27 children, depending on which Israeli outlet you check.
An Israeli security official says there's no confirmed sign this is an actual hijacking. Every possibility is still on the table. The plane won't be allowed to land in Israel until that's sorted out.
Flydubai hasn't said anything. Neither have Saudi authorities.
That's everything we know.
Why this mattersSo why does a 7500 code matter so much?
It exists for one reason. It lets a pilot tell air traffic control, quietly, that someone might be taking over the plane. Without tipping off whoever's doing it.
So when a flight carrying well over a hundred Israeli passengers sends that code over the Middle East, loses contact with the ground, changes course twice, and gets fighter jets sent after it, every government nearby takes it seriously. Until it's proven otherwise.
But here's why officials are also being careful.
Codes like 7500 have a long history of false alarms. A pilot can send it by mistake while trying to type something else. Transponders can glitch and show the wrong signal on the ground. The aviation tracker Newsquawk says this exact pattern, a hijack code, then lost contact, then jets scrambled, has usually turned out to be a technical fault or a mis-typed code. Not a real hijacking.
And there's a detail here that points that way too.
Minutes after the alarm went out, the pilot signalled the plane was heading toward Israel again. That's not what you'd expect if someone had actually seized control and diverted it on purpose.
Still, nobody has confirmed anything yet. Israel's own security people say all possibilities remain open. That's why the plane is being kept out of Israeli airspace for now. And why Benjamin Netanyahu and Israel Katz are treating this as an emergency in the meantime.
Right now, nobody outside that cockpit knows if this was a threat, a mistake, or a broken machine.
And nobody has said where the plane is now, or when it's going to land.
