Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. (AP Photo, File)
Tel Aviv: A pilot stabbed another pilot and then apparently tried to crash to aircraft carrying dozens of Israelis on Wednesday, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said. Passengers and crew subdued the attacker and the plane eventually made an emergency landing in Saudi Arabia.
Netanyahu said that Saudi Arabia had arrested the pilot of a FlyDubai flight.
“I salute these heroes who showed exceptional resourcefulness and courage. They saved many lives and prevented a major disaster,” said Netanyahu in his Wednesday statement.
The flight traveling from the United Arab Emirates to Israel landed safely. But Israel believes there may have been an attempt to attack Israelis, and an investigation is ongoing, an Israeli official said earlier.
Around two and a half hours after leaving Dubai, the plane sent an emergency alert, according to publicly available flight tracking information.
The flight abruptly descended from 33,000 feet to 17,000 feet (around 10,000 meters to 5,100 meters) in about the space of a minute, before making an erratic circle close to the Jordanian border and eventually landing in Tabuk about an hour later, according to Flightradar24.
Video footage circulating on social media and reviewed by The Associated Press shows two men on the floor of the plane, with bloody wounds. Two people appear to be providing emergency medical treatment, while two others guard the cockpit. “We are guarding the pilot,” one person says in Hebrew. In another video, passengers weep and cry out in distress as the aircraft shakes.
The aircraft’s captain and the first officer were injured and taken to the hospital, according to a statement from the Prince Sultan bin Abdulaziz International Airport in Tabuk carried by the Saudi state-run Alekhbariya television. Passengers were receiving medical attention from local authorities, according to a regional official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to brief the media.
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