A Flydubai co-pilot stabbed the captain mid-flight and sent an Israel-bound jet plunging thousands of feet before passengers and crew forced an emergency landing in Saudi Arabia, witnesses and officials say.

Flydubai flight FZ1073 left Dubai for Tel Aviv on Wednesday, Sept. 30, 2026, carrying more than 170 people, most of them Israelis. About two and a half hours into the trip, near the Jordanian border, the calm shattered. Passengers described a sudden, violent drop, a scramble at the front of the cabin, and the sickening certainty that the plane was going down.

Fox News reported that a passenger said the co-pilot apparently stabbed the captain, collapsed onto the controls, and knocked out the instrument panel. The jet began plunging. Overhead bins flew open. Power failed. People screamed.

Flight-tracking data cited in the coverage showed the aircraft losing nearly 14,000 feet in less than 30 seconds before the first emergency signal. Transponder codes flipped to 7700, briefly to the unlawful-interference code 7500, then back to 7700 as the crew fought to regain control.

Heroes forced their way forward while the jet kept dropping

Passenger Almog Italie said the first two hours had been uneventful. Then came the drops.

"The flight from Dubai was a very calm one for the first two hours. And when we were at the Jordanian border, suddenly the aircraft dropped, like a massive drop, like a massive turbulence for 20-30 seconds. Then balanced, and then once again dropped for 10 seconds and balanced again. And then we saw that in the front of the aircraft there was a riot. Many people rushed over there. Apparently, one pilot stabbed the other."

Haim Lazarovich, seated near the front with his wife and young son, described the terror of watching the aircraft fall and feeling separated from his family.

"The plane was falling down... and then I felt that I am losing it, and I am going to lose all of my family. My wife was beside me, my little boy was also beside me and I was separated from them... it was very, very terrifying."

Lazarovich said a group of young people fought the second pilot. “Thank God I’m alive,” he added later at Ben Gurion Airport.

Another passenger told Fox the scene inside the cabin was pure panic.

"There are many different accounts, but apparently the co-pilot stabbed the captain and collapsed onto the controls, shutting down the entire instrument panel. We began plunging downward for several minutes. Everyone on the plane was screaming, the overhead compartments opened, and the power went out. We were sure we were going to die. It was very scary."

Yasmin Abukasis, whose daughter was on board, said passengers grabbed a man with a knife, forced him to the floor amid heavy bleeding, and helped clear the way for other pilots to take over. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s office later credited passenger Yaniv Hayun with breaking into the cockpit. Netanyahu embraced him after the ordeal.

Off-duty crew finished what the attackers tried to stop

The New York Post reported that two off-duty European relief pilots traveling on the Boeing 737 Max, one of them British, took control after the wounded pilot managed to open the cockpit door. They stabilized the jet and brought it down safely in Tabuk, Saudi Arabia.

Flydubai confirmed only that an “altercation occurred in the flight deck.” The airline said on-duty Flydubai crew already aboard helped secure the aircraft, divert it, and land. It did not confirm a stabbing. A spokesperson said motives remain unknown and under formal investigation, and urged the public not to speculate ahead of the facts.

Tabuk airport officials said both pilots were hospitalized with injuries. A U.S. official told Fox the alleged attacker was taken into custody on landing. Netanyahu said Saudi authorities arrested and were investigating the pilot accused of the stabbing. A regional official said the crew had been questioned as part of the probe.

Everyone aboard was reported safe. Flydubai sent two replacement aircraft. Passengers reached Ben Gurion International Airport near Tel Aviv that Wednesday evening local time after the long diversion.

Israeli leaders call it an attempted crash, the airline says wait for facts

Reuters reported that Israeli officials described passengers and crew overpowering a co-pilot who stabbed the pilot and tried to sabotage systems and crash the plane. The co-pilot was identified in that account as an Omani national. Netanyahu ordered tighter security checks on pilots flying to Israel and said a joint investigation was underway.

Netanyahu framed the outcome in blunt terms.

"I salute the heroes who showed extraordinary bravery and, according to the passenger's account, saved many lives."

Defense Minister Israel Katz went further, calling the episode an attempted jihadist terrorist attack and stating the attacker’s intent in plain language.

"According to the preliminary information available to us, the terrorist had one intention: to crash the aircraft with everyone on board."

Those characterizations remain contested. Flydubai has not endorsed a terror motive. Its spokesperson said the underlying reasons “are unknown and remain subject to a formal investigation.” Accounts also differ on which pilot was the aggressor. One passenger said the co-pilot stabbed the captain; other witnesses spoke more generally of one pilot stabbing the other. The airline’s public statements stay limited to a flight-deck altercation.

Capt. Meidan Barr, former chairman of the Israel Airline Pilot Association, told Fox the altitude loss resembled an emergency descent after a loss of cabin pressure, the kind of maneuver crews train for, not the gentle ride passengers expect.

"Losing like 15,000 feet in two or three minutes, that is something that you do in, like, an emergency descent when you lose pressure."

Israel initially feared a hijacking. Fighter jets scrambled. Israeli airspace closed temporarily, then reopened after the safe landing in Saudi Arabia. Netanyahu convened security consultations and cleared the rest of his schedule. The episode landed in a region already living with high-stakes conflict and hard choices, including debates over Netanyahu’s refusal to accept fragile Gaza frameworks before Hamas is disarmed.

Tracking data and passenger video leave little doubt about the danger

Just The News reported the jet plunged from roughly 33,000 feet toward 17,000 feet before the emergency landing, with about 170 people aboard and both the captain and first officer injured. Two Israeli jets were scrambled to intercept during the scare.

Flightradar24 data, cited through wire reporting, put the steepest drop at nearly 14,000 feet in under half a minute. That matches the passenger panic even if exact second-by-second clocks still await official recorder releases. The New York Post account put the stabbing around 34,000 feet and described a roughly 17,000-foot plunge across about two minutes before relief pilots regained authority.

Photos and passenger video from the aftermath showed blood and chaos. One passenger recorded a real-time appeal for help while the attacker was already subdued and the plane lined up for landing. Another described a pilot seriously hurt and the cabin “drenched in blood.” Those images and clips circulated as families waited at Ben Gurion and Saudi security locked down the Tabuk apron.

Sudden violence in transit corridors has a way of rattling the public even when officials later label an episode an accident or still-open probe, as in the recent case of U.S. government workers shot at a foreign roadblock. This time the stakes were an airliner full of civilians and a cockpit fight measured in seconds.

Open questions the Saudis and the airline still have to answer

Investigators have not released cockpit voice or flight-data recorder findings. Saudi authorities have not publicly confirmed a completed charging document. Pilot identities and full nationalities beyond the Omani description of the alleged attacker remain thinly detailed in open reporting. Exact injury lists for anyone beyond the two hospitalized pilots are incomplete. Motive is the biggest gap of all.

Flydubai is the lower-cost sister carrier of Emirates. Direct flights between Israel and the United Arab Emirates only resumed after the 2020 normalization deals. That route now carries ordinary travelers and the security burdens that come with any Israel-bound aircraft. Israeli officials say they will harden pilot screening. Whether that hardens fast enough is a policy question, not a press release.

Parallel scares overseas, including a French train derailment investigators have examined for possible sabotage, keep the same basic problem in view: modern travel depends on trust inside the cockpit, the cab, and the control room. When that trust breaks, seconds decide who lives.

Political noise around Netanyahu never stops, from street protests to rhetorical campaigns that treat Israeli self-defense as the real offense, including the kind of agitation seen when a socialist congressional candidate was arrested at an anti-Netanyahu demonstration near the United Nations. None of that noise landed the damaged 737. Passengers and off-duty pilots did.

A 2022 cockpit fight between Air France pilots on a short European hop ended without a diversion. This one did not. The difference was steel, systems sabotage, and a dive measured in thousands of feet. Barr called the eventual safe landing significant for investigators. It is also significant for every family that walked off that aircraft in Tabuk and later into Ben Gurion.

Courage in the aisle still beats ideology in the cockpit, and free nations that forget how fast a jet can fall will relearn the lesson the hard way.