Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu says the flydubai co-pilot who stabbed his captain had undergone Islamist radical indoctrination and looked set to down the plane, passengers and crew stopped him.
A flydubai jet bound for Tel Aviv nearly became a midair massacre after the co-pilot stabbed the captain and the aircraft plunged thousands of feet over Saudi Arabia.
Passengers forced their way into the cockpit, overpowered the attacker, and helped a reserve crew bring the plane down safely. More than 170 people were on board. Israeli leaders now call it an attempted crash attack with a radical Islamist trail.
Daily Mail reporting on the aftermath centered on Netanyahu’s assessment of the Omani co-pilot’s background and intent. The prime minister said the man was clearly suicidal and that radicalization showed up in personal information already under review.
“We know that he underwent Islamist radical indoctrination. That appears to be something we are gathering from his personal information,” Netanyahu said.
"It looks very likely that he was going to down the plane."
He added that Islamist tendencies and radicalization in the co-pilot’s background offered “a pretty good clue,” while stressing he would not lock in final conclusions yet. He also said Israel would chase whether the attacker had accomplices and whether Iran stood behind the plot.
Flight FZ1073 left Dubai for Tel Aviv on Wednesday. The co-pilot, an Omani national, attacked Indian captain Smit Machchhar inside the locked cockpit. Machchhar was covered in cuts. An Israeli doctor on board, Musaev Shota, later described the captain’s wounds in stark terms.
"His head and his hands were practically sliced open, almost severed in two."
Even wounded, Machchhar managed to unlock the cockpit door. That single act let passengers rush the attacker before the jet could finish its dive. Flight-tracking data showed the plane dropped more than 14,000 feet in less than 30 seconds while flying over Saudi Arabia.
Just The News reported the aircraft fell from roughly 33,000 feet toward 17,000 feet before the emergency landing in Saudi Arabia, with both the captain and first officer hurt and later hospitalized. The outlet also carried Netanyahu’s salute to the people who stopped the attack.
"I salute these heroes, who displayed exceptional resourcefulness and courage. They saved many lives. They prevented a huge disaster."
That is not soft language. It is the plain accounting of a cabin that refused to die on someone else’s schedule.
Among the passengers who broke into the fight was Yaniv Hayoun. He told reporters he pulled the assailant out of the cockpit as the nose pointed down, then grabbed the controls for a few critical seconds.
"We pulled the assailant out, I pulled him out. After I pulled him out we took control of the plane, I pulled up the yoke (steering control of the plane), I straightened the plane out a bit."
Hayoun said he leaned over the seat, reached forward, and pulled the controls toward himself because the aircraft was pointing downward. He did not claim to be a pilot. He said he remembered a basic lesson from the television program Air Crash Investigation: when a plane is going down, pull the controls back to bring the nose level.
"I saw on it that when an aircraft is going downward, you have to bring the controls back, pull them backward, to bring the nose level. It really was only for a few seconds. It wasn't as though I flew the plane."
Reserve crew already aboard then landed the jet at Tabuk airport in Saudi Arabia. The attacker was subdued. The plane did not hit the ground as a weapon. That sequence is why families in Tel Aviv got phone calls instead of death notices.
Readers following passengers who foiled the flydubai crash bid already know the core outline: a cockpit knife attack, a dive, and civilians who refused to freeze.
Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz said Wednesday that preliminary information showed the co-pilot aimed to crash the plane and described him as a terrorist. Israeli President Isaac Herzog said Thursday he would present heroism awards to five Israelis who helped overpower the knifeman.
"You put yourselves at risk to save others and prevented a terrible disaster. Today, the whole world saw the beautiful and courageous face of Israeli society."
“I am proud of you, and I thank you on behalf of the State of Israel,” Herzog said.
The New York Post reported the stabbing hit about two and a half hours after takeoff near 34,000 feet, with a drop of about 17,000 feet in two minutes. Two European relief pilots, including one British flier, then got the Boeing 737 Max onto the ground in Tabuk with 174 people aboard. The alleged attacker was of Omani descent, had worked at flydubai less than a year, and was left bound and bloodied after passengers finished with him.
Passenger video from the cabin captured the raw aftermath. One traveler said the group had subdued “the terrorists” and needed help on approach. Another told family the landing in Saudi Arabia came after a seriously injured pilot was taken toward a hospital and called a relative a hero for what happened in that cockpit fight.
Those details match the larger pattern already covered when passengers stopped the co-pilot on the Israel-bound jet: ordinary people moved first, then trained hands landed the aircraft.
Reuters put the passenger count at 174, mostly Israeli nationals, and said they reached Tel Aviv more than 10 hours later on a replacement aircraft after the safe diversion. Passenger Lital Shachaf called the outcome a miracle after an ordeal she did not expect to survive. Asaf Rajuan said people ran without thinking to save their families.
Netanyahu met Hayoun at Ben Gurion Airport and publicly hailed Machchhar alongside Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi. India’s ambassador to the UAE met the wounded captain. The Indian embassy said Machchhar was in good health and recovering well.
UAE authorities opened investigations into the circumstances and motives, including whether the incident tied to terrorist activity, prior planning, or outside direction. Israeli intelligence services Mossad and Shin Bet are also on the case. The attacker was being investigated in Saudi Arabia, and Netanyahu said he believed the man would be taken to the UAE. Omani authorities had not commented in the initial wave of statements.
Two Israeli security officials offered an early read that the co-pilot likely acted alone, with the probe still open. Another Israeli official said Israel was not receiving all the information it wanted from the Saudis. Israel’s envoy to the UAE, Yossi Shelley, said it was too early to draw firm conclusions and that no motive had been locked down.
Flydubai urged the public not to speculate while the formal investigation runs. That corporate caution sits beside the hard facts already public: a stabbing in the cockpit, a violent dive, passengers who broke in, and leaders who now point to radical Islamist indoctrination and a suicidal crash plan.
Aviation security failures do not stay theoretical. Related pressure points keep showing up, from an explosive drone found near a cargo plane in Germany to cabin chaos that forces diversions when crews lose control of a single threat.
Unruly-passenger cases can look small until they are not. A recent American Airlines diversion after a passenger was detained with duct tape and zip ties is a reminder that restraint and quick action still decide whether a flight ends on a runway or in a crater.
The verified chain is simple and ugly. An Omani co-pilot stabbed the captain on an Israel-bound flight. The wounded captain opened the door. Passengers hauled the attacker out. One of them pulled the nose up for seconds that mattered. Relief pilots landed at Tabuk. Israeli leaders then described radical indoctrination, suicidal intent, and an apparent plan to destroy the aircraft and everyone on it.
Media coverage of the same cockpit fight even triggered its own storm when a network later apologized for airing the wrong crash-site imagery during related reporting, another sign of how raw this story hit once the dive and the stabbing became public.
No final court finding has closed every question. Full name details on the co-pilot remained thin in early accounts. Absolute calendar dates were framed in weekday terms. Proof of accomplices or Iranian direction was still a live investigative question, not a finished brief. Netanyahu himself refused to pretend otherwise while still naming the radicalization trail he said investigators were already seeing.
What does not wait for a binder of sealed exhibits is the duty this episode puts back on airlines, intelligence services, and governments that move people across hostile airspace. A cockpit is not a therapy room. A commercial jet is not a stage for someone else’s martyrdom fantasy. When radicalization walks onto a flight deck with a knife, only force, skill, and civilian guts stand between a passenger list and a mass grave.
Israel’s passengers and crew did their job under blood and falling altitude. The remaining work belongs to investigators who should expose every handler, every indoctrinator, and every security gap that let a suicidal radical sit in the right-hand seat of an Israel-bound jet.
