There were reportedly two additional pilot s on the flydubai flight from Dubai to Tel Aviv that was diverted to Saudi Arabia’s Tabuk, where it landed safely after an “incident”. After a physical altercation broke out between the pilot-in-command and the co-pilot, a passenger had to “shake” the additional pilots to get them to take control of the plane as they had initially frozen.
The plane’s captain and first officer were injured, according to a statement by Prince Sultan bin Abdulaziz International Airport in Tabuk, carried by state-run Al Ekhbariya television, AP reported. He reportedly fought off the co-pilot before passengers subdued the attacker, while the additional pilots helped land the plane safely.
The captain of the plane, Smit Machchhar, is an Indian national who was previously associated with SpiceJet.
HT could not independently confirm the passenger’s account. One took control of the aircraft; the other took longer to recover,” Klein wrote. Video footage circulating on social media shows two men on the plane’s floor, bloodied and wounded. Two people appeared to be providing medical treatment, while two others guarded the cockpit. However, the motive behind the attack is still unclear.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu gave almost a similar account of what happened inside the plane as it fell about 14,300 feet in 37 seconds.
“I had to shake them to get them to move to the front and take control of the plane because it was diving,” the passenger said, according to Zvika Klein, editor of The Jerusalem Post, who wrote about the account on his X timeline. “He (the passenger) said the additional pilots were assigned to the flight. During the emergency, he said, both initially froze. Israeli passengers pulled the attacker out of the cockpit and got the other pilots inside, according to his account. The Israeli PM said that the co-pilot stabbed the pilot-in-command while trying to crash the aircraft, and that “brave” passengers and crew then subdued the attacker, allowing the plane to land safely in Saudi Arabia.
