The Israeli government on Wednesday, September 30, said it believed an incident on a flight from the United Arab Emirates to Israel, which diverted to Saudi Arabia after transmitting emergency signals on Wednesday, may have been an attempted “terror attack” by one of the pilots, Reuters News Agency reported.
The two Israeli officials said the co-pilot was believed to have stabbed the captain before cabin crew entered the cockpit and took control of the plane.
An Israeli official had earlier told Reuters the plane transmitted the emergency signals after the pilots got into a physical altercation with each other.
Around the time the plane landed in Saudi Arabia, Doron Spielman, a spokesperson for the Israeli prime minister’s office, told Reuters the incident was not believed to have been a hijacking, describing it as a “different incident.”
He did not immediately respond to a further request for comment on whether Israel was treating it as terror incident.
The two officials, speaking on the condition of anonymity, said Israel’s current assessment is that the incident was an attempted “terror attack” and not related to any kind of mental health issue with either of the pilots.
In a video purportedly of an Israeli passenger on board the flydubai flight and carried widely by Israeli media, the passenger said one of the pilots was seriously injured after he was stabbed by the co-pilot.
Saudi Arabia’s Tabuk airport, where the plane eventually landed safely, said that the pilot had been hospitalised after sustaining injuries. Neither the airport nor the purported Israeli passenger identified the attacker.
Flight FZ1073 from Dubai to Tel Aviv diverted to Saudi Arabia as it flew over Jordanian airspace, transmitting a general emergency signal and then another emergency signal that indicated possible unlawful interference, according to flight-tracking website Flightradar24.
The Boeing 737 plane, which Israeli media said had around 150 Israeli passengers on board, then again transmitted the initial general emergency signal before later landing at Tabuk airport in northwestern Saudi Arabia, the website said.
The aircraft’s data appeared to show that it had suddenly and rapidly descended by nearly 14,000 feet in less than 30 seconds before the first emergency signal, Flightradar24 said. It was not immediately clear who transmitted the emergency signals.
