Israel now treats Flydubai cockpit drama as attempted terror attack

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Israeli authorities are classifying Wednesday’s mid-air incident on a Dubai–Tel Aviv flight as an attempted terrorist attack, after passenger testimony and a security review shifted the working theory from a cockpit brawl to a suspected bid by one pilot to seize and crash the aircraft.

Flydubai flight FZ1073, a Boeing 737 MAX 8 carrying about 174–180 people including dozens of Israeli passengers and 27 children, left Dubai International in the morning bound for Ben Gurion Airport. About 90 minutes into the flight it transmitted a general emergency code (7700), then the code used for unlawful interference or hijacking (7500). Flight-tracking data showed a steep descent of more than 17,000 feet in roughly two minutes before the jet turned away from Israel and landed safely at Tabuk in northwestern Saudi Arabia.

Israeli fighter jets were scrambled. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Defense Minister Israel Katz held an urgent consultation. Contact with the aircraft was briefly lost, and takeoffs from Ben Gurion were paused while officials assessed whether the plane posed a threat.

From “pilot fight” to terror inquiry

Early official statements and the airline’s first comments described a violent altercation between the two pilots — reported in Israeli media as a Russian captain and a Ukrainian first officer — that triggered the distress codes. Flydubai confirmed an “incident” en route, said the aircraft landed safely at Tabuk, and said all passengers were accounted for. An Israeli official told Reuters the event was not believed to be a hijacking.

That assessment has hardened. After passenger interviews and a situation review, Israeli outlets including Channel 7 reported that officials now treat the episode as terrorism. According to those accounts, the first officer stabbed the captain multiple times and is suspected of trying to take control of the aircraft and crash it. Crew and passengers forced the cockpit door and subdued the attacker. A senior Israeli official said “a very serious disaster was averted.”

Passengers described screams, a sudden dive, and blood in the cockpit. One traveler told Channel 12 that the door was opened and they saw a pilot who had been stabbed with a pocketknife. Another said Israeli passengers helped restrain the attacker. Some Hebrew-language reports said one pilot may have put the jet into a high-speed dive that the other fought to stop. Those details have not been independently confirmed by the airline or by Saudi or Emirati investigators.

What happens next

Both pilots were removed from the aircraft after landing in Tabuk. Flydubai said it would send a replacement jet to bring passengers on to Israel. The motive of the suspected attacker, if the terrorism theory holds, has not been made public. International reporting still largely frames the incident as a cockpit fight that produced a hijack-style alert; the sharper Israeli classification is based on later testimony and internal assessments.

Investigators in Saudi Arabia, the UAE, and Israel will now examine flight-data recorders, cockpit voice recordings, and passenger statements. Until those findings are released, the confirmed picture is this: a commercial flight heading to Israel sent a hijack code, dropped altitude sharply, diverted to Tabuk, and landed with everyone alive — after a struggle in the cockpit that Israel now says it believes was an attempt to bring the plane down.

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