Passengers on a flight to Israel have recounted how they subdued a pilot after he stabbed the other pilot and appeared to be trying to disable the plane, while others described the “terrifying” moment they thought they would die.
Appearing in a bloodstained shirt after the ordeal, Yaniv Hayun told Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu he realised something was wrong when the aircraft suddenly dropped.
The plane, en route from Dubai to Tel Aviv, plummeted 17,000ft (5,200m) in less than two minutes.
“Someone screamed… the light went out,” Hayun said in a video posted by the prime minister on social media.
He and others tried to push open the cockpit door, but the pilot who had been stabbed was very close to it, so it was hard to open. Before he collapsed, the injured pilot managed to open the door.
When Hayun and another man entered the cockpit, he said he saw one pilot down and the attacker on the instruments, between the two seats, “trying to destroy the instruments in order to…disable the plane”.
“I grabbed the attacker, put him in a chokehold, and pulled him – first and foremost – outside,” Hayun said.
“We pulled him out; it was a matter of seconds. I called out to the Israeli guys with us on the plane – I called them, and two other guys came over to me… we pinned [the attacker] down to keep him secure.”
Hayun said he then jumped back into the cockpit and “started pulling the controls”.
When asked by Netanyahu whether he knew what he was doing, the passenger answered: “I watch Air Crash Investigation, Mr Prime Minister.”
Hayun said the plane then started to level out. By then, two on-duty pilots who had been in the passenger cabin were at the front of the plane, and one told Hayun he was taking control from there.
Netanyahu praised Hayun, calling him a “great hero” and a “lion”.
Another passenger, Zvika Meness, told Israeli public broadcaster Kan he helped overpower the attacker, and the passenger and two others “tied him up with his own zip ties and with the multimedia headphones”.
“Another pilot who was sitting in the passenger cabin went in to replace the additional pilot, and they essentially landed the plane,” he added.
The Flydubai flight eventually landed at Tabuk airport in northwestern Saudi Arabia, and the passengers were later taken to Tel Aviv’s Ben Gurion airport on a repatriation aircraft.
They were greeted by crowds of onlookers playing music, singing, dancing and waving Israeli flags.
“Thank God I’m alive,” passenger Haim Lazarovich told journalists, adding that “the most terrifying moment in this flight was when the pilot loses control”.
Oran Choen, an 18-year-old passenger, described the incident as “a very tough moment”.
“Maybe it was five minutes, but it feels like hell – I heard my brother behind me scream that we was going to die,” he added.
A paramedic from Israel’s ambulance service later told the BBC that a number of people were “very emotional and crying as they came off the plane”.
The stabbed pilot, Indian national Captain Smit Machchhar, was taken to hospital but is in stable condition, according to the Indian embassy in Saudi Arabia.
Netanyahu praised Machchhar as a “true hero” of “extraordinary bravery”.
The attacker was arrested and is being questioned by Saudi authorities.
Israeli Defence Minister Israel Katz has called it an “attempted jihadist terror attack”. No official motive for the incident or further information has been given.
US President Donald Trump said he had spoken with Netanyahu following the incident, saying it seemed as though the attacker was “perhaps a terrorist” or there were other reasons behind the attack.
By BBC News
Email your news TIPS to Editor@Kahawatungu.com — this is our only official communication channel
