Pilot stabbed another in bid to crash Israel-bound Flydubai jet: Netanyahu

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu says one pilot on a Flydubai flight stabbed another pilot and apparently tried to crash the plane en route from Dubai in the United Arab Emirates to Israel’s Tel Aviv.

Netanyahu said in a video message on Wednesday that the passengers, whom he referred to as “heroes”, “prevented a major disaster”.

“During the flight, as they approached the country [Israel], one of the pilots stabbed the other pilot, and apparently tried to crash the plane with everyone on board,” he said.

The plane transmitted an emergency alert shortly after takeoff on Wednesday, making an emergency landing in Saudi Arabia’s Tabuk airport with all passengers safe and accounted for, according to the airline.

Flight-tracking data indicated that it was a Boeing 737 Max 8 aircraft.

According to data from the Flightradar24 website, the aircraft suddenly lost altitude during the flight, dropping from nearly 34,000 feet (more than 10,000 metres) at 05:21 GMT to less than 17,000 feet (5,100 metres) at 05:22 GMT.

The pilot and copilot were admitted to hospital with injuries, Tabuk airport said. Later on Wednesday, the airport said all Flydubai passengers departed for their final destination on a replacement aircraft.

Footage circulated by international news agencies showed the rescue flight – operated by Flydubai – land in Tel Aviv’s Ben Gurion airport at 15:34 GMT.

‘Cheap politics’

Israeli opposition leader Yair Lapid on Wednesday accused the government of playing “cheap politics” at the expense of Israel’s security following the Flydubai plane scare.

Lapid rejected attempts to link the incident to a security briefing he received from Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Tuesday evening.

“Let me make this clear. Nothing even resembling this morning’s plane incident appeared in the security briefing with the prime minister last night. Nothing similar, nothing reminiscent of it, not even a hint,” he said on X.

Lapid accused government-aligned voices of trying to use the incident for political purposes.

“All the spin the mouthpieces are doing now only proves what was already clear yesterday – that they are once again trying to make cheap politics at the expense of Israel’s security,” he said, adding: “An irresponsible bunch.”

Later on Wednesday, a spokesperson for Netanyahu’s office was quoted by the Reuters news agency as saying that the prime minister has ordered to “ramp up” security both on Israeli and international carriers operating in Israel after the Flydubai incident.

Sharp descent

Passengers on the plane told Israel’s Channel 12 by phone that they heard shouts from the front of the plane and heard the altercation between the pilots, and that the plane dipped steeply before the emergency landing.

At the time of reporting, all the passengers were on the plane and there was a heavy presence of Saudi security forces around.

Passenger Miryam Shira Ohayon was quoted by the AFP news agency as saying that the plane was “pretty much out of control” when one of the pilots tried to stab the other while they were flying over Jordan en route from Dubai to Tel Aviv.

“So the co-pilot tried to murder the pilot and basically carry out a suicide attack on the plane,” she told reporters by speakerphone, held up by her mother, who was waiting at Ben Gurion Airport near Tel Aviv.

“What we understand, according to flight radar tracking, is that two emergency signals were transmitted from the flight – the first was a general emergency signal and the second, a few minutes later, seemed to indicate some kind of unlawful interference on the flight,” Al Jazeera’s Zein Basravi, reporting from Doha, Qatar, said.

“Tracking data also shows that the aircraft plunged nearly 14,000 feet within 30 seconds during the incident – a steep, sharp descent that would have unnerved passengers.”

Later on Wednesday, Flightradar24 temporarily showed a second Flydubai flight from Dubai to Tel Aviv diverting back to Dubai, but then showed it continuing on its planned route to Israel.

Normalised ties

Flydubai is a low-cost sister carrier of Emirates airline. The UAE has become a popular holiday destination for Israeli tourists since the countries normalised ties in 2020.

Flydubai’s fleet relies entirely on variants of the 737, a twin-engine, single-aisle aircraft widely used by airlines around the world. It has nearly 100 planes, including 69 of the Max 8 variant.

The flight originated from Dubai airport, the Middle East’s busiest and the world’s largest in terms of international travel. It handled a record 95.2 million passengers last year.

It is not the first time a flight between Israel and the UAE has landed in Saudi Arabia. A Flydubai flight from Dubai to Tel Aviv made an emergency landing in Riyadh in September 2025 due to a medical incident, the Israeli media reported at the time.

‘Inside threat’ to civil aviation

Philip Baum, the managing director of Green Light Ltd – a training and consultancy firm specialising in inflight security, hijacker and unruly passenger management – said that while it is too early to tell exactly what happened on the Flydubai flight, the incident draws into focus the “insider threat to civil aviation”.

“Regardless of whether or not, it was a terrorist attack or whether it was a heated argument on the flight deck, or indeed, whether it was some mental health breakdown, it illustrates the fact that the insider threat is probably the greatest threat to civil aviation nowadays,” Baum tells Al Jazeera.

“In the post-9/11 era since September 11, 2001, we’ve actually lost more lives on board commercial aircraft as a result of pilot suicide than we have as a result of terrorism. So we really do need to think about who’s at the controls, and how we can prevent the wrong person being at the controls because we’ve got this new enhanced part of the investigation,” he said.